- Via Christa
- » Lectures
- » Edna Lister’s Lectures, 1933
Edna Lister’s Lectures, 1933
God as Consciousness Appears as Form
Edna Lister transcript, January 1933, Clarissa A. Watkins, scribe.
“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.”–Philippians 2:5.
“We have the mind of Christ.”–1 Corinthians 2:16.
“Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.”–Romans 12:2.
There is no such thing as God and. There is no God and man, no God and abundance, health, or love. God is infinite, so nothing but God can be. God fills all space, so no room exists for God and someone or God and something. God is the Someone, the something. In other words, God appears individually as you. It is not a case of God and you, but God manifested as individual you. The life of God is your life. There is no Mind of God and your mind. There is no Spirit of God and your spirit. Scripture says that your body is the Temple of God, so it is not even God and your body, but God as your body.
If you perceive God’s infinite nature, you perceive that God appears as His Son. Therefore, God is the Father and God is the Son. There is not God and the Son, but God the Infinite Invisible appearing as the Son of God. This is the only reason the Master could say, “He who hath seen me hath seen the Father.”–John 14:9. Unless you understand this identity with God as a universal relationship, the life of the Master is meaningless. If oneness with the Father were the truth about the Master but not about you, then you could not attain oneness, you could not achieve it. Jesus is the way-shower, and the way he lived is the way he is showing you to live, as one with God. Therefore, there is only God expressing as His Creation, as man.
When Scripture says to have that mind in you that was in Christ Jesus, it is telling you that this is possible. Do not think that the mind in Christ Jesus is a different mind that you cannot attain. You may think, “I have a mind. He has a mind. She has a mind.” This is not true. Everyone has the one Mind, and it is the same Mind, no matter who is expressing it or to what degree. A child’s mind has an innate, an inborn capacity for intelligence, which he later fills with knowledge of specific things. If he had no capacity for intelligence, a child could not learn. You have the capacity to learn however much you desire. Your intelligence is infinite because God is your intelligence. You can have whatever degree of awareness or knowledge you wish by using that intelligence.
Centuries of separation from spiritual reality have focused your intelligence primarily on material and mental subjects. Therefore, your intelligence lacks spiritual illumination. Your intelligence has the same potential for illumination as a child has the capacity for infinite learning. Some use the one Mind more than others and outwardly appear smarter, but this is not really true. God has not graded intelligence by degree. Everyone is infinitely intelligent, but not everyone uses his intelligence in full measure. Each has the same infinite potential for spiritual enlightenment as he does for intelligence. You may say that the mind of the human race is spiritually unillumined.
Humanity may be humanly intelligent, humanly creative, humanly brilliant, but it lacks spiritual illumination. You may be led to spiritual teaching, and from the moment you open your first book or have your first interview with an enlightened person, your illumination begins. Further enlightenment or spiritual illumination comes in proportion to your seeking. In other words, you must make the overture, you must originally reach out, you must pursue the search for God. If you seek God 1 percent, God seeks you 99 percent. No matter how much effort you make, it is only a grain of effort because that is all you know. The rest is up to the grace of God. In other words, as you keep moving toward God, you are drawn toward God ever more rapidly, until spiritual illumination dawns. When this Light dawns in your consciousness, you behold God as infinite and instantly realize that God and anything else cannot be, or God would be that much less than infinite.
Therefore, God must exist as the substance of all that is. Then you see that God constitutes all that is. You no longer look to God for your health because, as the Psalms say, God is the health of your countenance. A power of resurrection does not exist separate from God. God is resurrection. You cannot get health, but you can get God. When you have God, you have health. In the same way, you cannot get God to give or send you abundance because God is abundance. You cannot have infinite abundance and then some besides that. God is abundance. I am the bread. I am the wine. I am the water. I am the resurrection. I am the life eternal. There is not God and a power of resurrection. God is the resurrection and the life eternal.
God cannot give you a bomb-proof shelter. God already is your fortress, your high tower, and the only bomb-proof shelter there is. When you are hidden with Christ in God
(Colossians 3:3), in the spiritual realization of God as your being, then nothing can reach you—not a bomb, a bullet or a poison. As you see God as the secret place of the Most High, the high tower, the fortress, the rock, the cave—as you see God as bread, meat, wine and water—as you see God as health, harmony, wholeness, companionship or home—only then can all these things come into manifestation.
People may ask you to pray for a home, companionship or marriage for them. Tell them, “I’m sorry. I don’t know how to work for those things. Should you find yourself interested in learning about God, I shall be very happy to share what I know, what I have learned, and how I believe you may find God. I wouldn’t be surprised that if you find God, you also would find those things you are seeking.” This is what the Master meant when he said, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”–Matthew 6:33. Seek not material things—seek only God and He will add everything else you need. Thinking of God as a servant to do your bidding, to supply you with whatever you believe to be your need is sacrilegious.
Your mind, from infancy, is already completely intelligent, potentially spiritual. When you attain even a small measure of spiritual illumination, you perceive that God is your consciousness and your consciousness is the substance of all form. God is your consciousness, which appears outwardly as form. You cannot transfer your consciousness to another, nor can he transfer his consciousness to you. Once you perceive this truth, it forever lifts you above competition. Never again, whether you are in business, the arts, science, the healing ministry or the spiritual ministry at any level, will competition disturb you. You will be free because you don’t have customers, clients, patients or students. You have your consciousness, which externalizes itself as whatever form is necessary to you.
Once you understand that there is no God and, you know that there is no consciousness and. Therefore, you do not have your consciousness and your business. Your business is your consciousness in a specific personalized form. Your customers, clients or students, whom you have gathered through your integrity, represent your consciousness in form. No one can ever take them from you unless you lose your integrity; then, of course, they would find their rightful home. The bread you cast upon the waters is yours; it cannot return to another. The bread you cast forth must return to you because no separation exists between your consciousness, the bread, or the waters. All is consciousness appearing as form, and so it is!
God is the primal Consciousness, the Creative Impulse, the First Cause, which is your consciousness and which appears as safety, security or whatever form is necessary to you. No one can take your externalized consciousness from you because its reality is not a form. No one can take your money because your money is not money. Your money is your consciousness of God’s infinite supply, externalized. People lose money for just one reason: They have not learned that money is not money, that money is not something separate from God, that money is not something separate from infinity.
If God is infinite, money must be a part of infinity. If God is your consciousness, then your money is part of your consciousness, as is your home, your family, all that pertains to you. Neither time nor space can take them from you, for no material forms exist separate or apart from consciousness.
God is. God appears as your consciousness and your consciousness is the substance of all form associated with you. As you know this, you will never again seek bread, wine, water or life eternal. You will never seek companionship, students, patients or customers. You realize that your consciousness is all this. Your consciousness appears as and forms all these things. Then you see that no separation exists in consciousness. “Before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear.”–Isaiah 65:24. The idea of separation can never enter again. Nothing can separate you from God. This is literally true. All the Father has is yours. You don’t experience this because you have a sense of separation born of the materialistic concept that there is a God somewhere, a God and a man, that God is pure and man is a sinner.
How does a sinner get something good from God? The world tells you to be good by attending religious services every week. What is good? How do you conform to some type of good to deserve God? The answer is, you can find no way to get good enough to deserve God. However, you can find a way to realize God as your being. You find that because God is pure, your being is pure, and that truth has washed away all impurity. You forget to be good, and just remember God is your consciousness. Live with the realization that God is your being, your life, your mind and the only law operating in you. God’s presence is purification, and negative experiences disappear. This happens not because you are good, but because God is good. God is infinite, God is omnipresent and He leaves no room for negativity.
God constitutes your being. God is your consciousness. Because God is infinite, your consciousness is infinite. Therefore, your consciousness appears as form infinitely: Your business, your art, your profession, your science is infinite. If you are a healer, your practice is infinite. If you are a teacher, your student body is infinite. No limit exists at all, unless you embroider yourself in limitation. To keep yourself free from human rules and regulations, live above time, space, and place. Live in and as God-consciousness. Live, move and have your being in the truth that God is all that concerns you.
“God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; and hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.”–Acts 17:24-28
God is the measure of your being, safety, security, and protection. God is the measure of your life, your intelligence and wisdom. Never limit yourself. Then, you manifest a greater measure of infinity than you ever dreamed possible, for there is no God and. There is only God. God is the life and mind, the intelligence and wisdom of the individual being. God is the substance and law in which you live, move and have your being. Discard yesterday and tomorrow to live in the ever-present and eternal now. Then you will perceive that you project all desire into the future. All regret is a return to the past, both of which are dead, without substance or life. Now is the only life, now is the only reality, now is the only time. The future is only an extension of now.
The tree’s sap must flow from its roots to its branches to form buds, flowers and leaves. If tree-consciousness worried about whether it would get enough rain or sun, it would interfere with the normal, natural flow of life. You interfere with life’s free-flowing by injecting I-ness into the already completed picture. I-ness manifests as fear about the past or concern, anxiety or desire about the future. You may entertain no personal desire, not even the desire to give, for that, too, feeds the sense of I-ness and may bloat the ego. You must be completely nonresistant, as a leaf rests upon water, letting the water propel it wherever and whenever it will.
You overcome time and space by practicing nonresistance. You triumph over time by living only in the now, steadfastly relinquishing the past and the future. You conquer space by relinquishing the desire to be anywhere else, by resting satisfied in this very place, which is holy ground. This I-ness, this sense of an “I” apart from God, is the very devil causing discord. For, in reality, “I” is God, as God is I. God constitutes all that you are. Therefore, since you are one with the Father, you say not, “I need bread,” but “I am bread. I am supply. I have supply of which you know not.”
If God is infinite, if God constitutes your being, then your very being contains everything you shall ever need from now unto eternity. You need not try to acquire or attain, but to let what is already embodied within you appear outwardly as form. It is your consciousness, because God is your consciousness. Your consciousness contains all you need—tomorrow, next week, next year and unto eternity.
To know this absolutely, you must develop the practice of entering the golden Silence where you can behold and watch as these things appear in your life. If you wanted to compose music, you would not copy what another had written. You would sit in the golden Silence and wait until God released within you the melodies that you are to receive. If you were to write poetry, a novel, or a book of truth—it makes no difference what you wish to draw forth—it is already there. Yet you must develop that inner beholding, that listening attitude of soul that creates an inner silence. To the Voice that calls your name, you shall say, “Speak, Lord; Thy servant heareth.”–1 Samuel 3:9
Let this mind that was in Christ Jesus flow through you as pure knowing, and what you need moves into expression, whether it is business, whether you need employees, more capital in your business or new ideas for advertising. What you need does not exist in time and space. It exists within your consciousness. Your consciousness is the substance of all form and activity necessary to your life. This is how God as consciousness appears as form, and that consciousness and form are you!
God as Consciousness in Prayer
Edna Lister transcript, January 1933, Clarissa A. Watkins, scribe
You must develop a mode of prayer that becomes a listening ear, an attitude of listening so that God’s grace may flow to, through, and from you. Be assured, it will if you live, move and have your being in the realization that God is your consciousness. You must pray the moment that an appearance of discord presents itself to you. The moment for prayer is when you become aware of discord, when someone asks for help, not five minutes later. You are never justified in saying, “I’ll pray for you soon,” or “I’ll pray for you in an hour,” or “I’ll pray for you later.” Such an attitude toward healing or prayer work is never justified.
When treating several individuals in prayer, you cannot think of them as one, then enter the golden Silence and, by so doing, include them all. You must think of and treat each individual case by itself. In reality, your prayer treatment does not do something to someone. Your prayer does not do something to something. Always remember this: You do not aim your prayer treatment at doing anything to anyone or anything.
If you know the truth in the instant the conflict comes to your attention, you are in no danger of first taking it into your consciousness, then later having to lift it out and up into the Light. You lift instantly by knowing the truth under the principle of nonresistance. This does not mean that a result always will be instantaneous. You may hear later that the person or situation is better, worse or just the same. You may have to treat again, but you always offer the prayer treatment the moment someone brings the claim to your attention. If that person returns to your thoughts in an hour, you must immediately pray again. In other words, you cannot rest in peace until you have a sense of freedom within yourself about the case. If you recall it six, eight or ten times in the next twenty-four hours, you treat six, eight or ten times.
When a call for help comes, you instantly realize that only the grace of God can operate as law. There is no law of disease, infection, contagion or heredity. The only law is the law of God.
No one is ever called to handle prayer rapidly until he is prepared for it. In other words, at first you may have as few as three or four calls in a day, then six to ten, or twenty to thirty. By then, you are so in the spirit of realization that you see the illusion as rapidly as calls come, and instantly are able to turn to the next. The proportion of effectiveness is the same, whether you receive six or thirty calls for prayer a day. The number of calls has nothing to do with healing or prayer work, but with the developed state of your consciousness.
You need not concern yourself with how your healing and prayer work will develop. If you begin with one call, handle that call completely, no matter how long it takes. You have only one guide: If you were ill and calling for help, how would you like that person to treat your call? That is the way you must handle the calls you receive. Be satisfied that you have given your utmost understanding and prayer treatment, so help you God. You can do no more. Then, whatever the outcome, you have a clear conscience that you have fulfilled your responsibility at your highest level that moment.
Some make lists and offer prayer treatments every morning or night. If you handle a call when it comes, and as often as you remember it or as the individual calls for help, then you fulfill your responsibility. The finest results come from dealing with a situation in the moment it touches your consciousness, lifting it into Light, filling yourself and being ready for the next call. So, you never delay praying, or “wait until later.” Meet the need at its point of contact with your consciousness. Eventually, this is so simple that you can do it in the space of a two-minute phone call. This takes practice and development, and you can do it only by thoroughly handling one case at a time. At first, you may have to devote an hour to one person. Later, it will boil down to two minutes, but only because you have attuned your consciousness and accepted the principle of nonresistance.
Nonresistance is the principle of healing because you never use Power to heal anyone of anything. You learn in this work that you cannot use spiritual Power. You can use physical power, you can use mental power, but you cannot use spiritual Power. When you enter the realm of Spirit, Power uses you. You cannot use Power because Power is omnipotence, and you are its servant. Therefore, when you work according to the principle of nonresistance, you do not try to use Power to cure disease, to provide supply for anyone, or to overcome sin. You just know the truth that every appearance of evil is simply a form of mental malpractice. It is nothing more than the subconscious, which has no law, no cause, no life, no substance and no activity other than what you give it.
Healing is not something you do. Light as Power does the healing by using your consciousness as its servant. When you know truth, you become still and let God speak the Word. Then you hear the “still, small voice” that Elijah heard. This Voice thunders regarding error. God is reality. God is the goal of life. To live without harmony, health, abundance and companionship is living a very barren life, a life lacking God. Ascension of consciousness recognizes only God as a goal, only the search for God as a goal, only the attainment of God as a goal. Then you discover the greatest mystery of all—that in attaining God, you have attained health, harmony, wholeness, completeness, companionship, home and abundance with twelve baskets-full left over to share.
“My creed is love. My path is service. My goal is God.” Once you accept God as the goal, only your mode of attainment remains in question. You are not seeking things, but seeking that Mind, which is God, that consciousness, which is God. Then watch how the consciousness, which is God, becomes your individual consciousness, becomes the substance of the harmonies of life. When you ask, beg, plead, and attempt to get from God only, all harmony becomes automatic. Remember, God as consciousness appears as form, and that consciousness in form is you.
The Gold Standard
Edna Lister transcript, January 6, 1933, Clarissa A. Watkins, scribe.
{Note: 1933 marked the lowest point of the Great Depression; the U.S. economy had contracted by 30 percent, and unemployment stood at 25 percent.} Today, as never before, we are concerned with our relationship to material “things” on the one side and that immaterial power, which we call God or Spirit, on the other. The solution to our financial worries must include this idea of unity in the relationship between the visible and the invisible in a broader sense than man has ever used it. We must sweep aside, for all time, the idea of each of us being a separate part. We must become unified, working with and for each other. We must understand ever more clearly the laws of being that bring forth from the invisible into the visible. We must understand how the Master increased the “loaves and fishes,” and be able to apply that process to our own needs.
The first step always consists in having your needs met at the time. The second step is to have just enough to meet your needs before you really need to use it. The third step is to have the symbolic “twelve baskets left over to share” freely after you fulfill your own needs. Let us consider four ideas concerning these laws, which we must use to complete any needed manifestation. The old method was to concentrate or to demonstrate the supply of abundance. You sat in the Silence, concentrated on your empty purse, and knew that the Divine Infinite would fill it. If, while you were concentrating on your supply, Billy came home with some claim of illness, you had to stop concentrating on supply and concentrate on Billy. If other needs presented themselves, you had to concentrate on them. Meanwhile, your purse became empty again.
Concentration is a mental power and comes by using will. You can use the power of concentration only in one direction at a time and upon only one thing at a time. Therefore, it will not work well for manifesting supply. You need something that will do all things at once. You can always find this in your ability to surrender yourself completely to the Power of Love. You can concentrate harder than ever before, but only on keeping yourself completely surrendered to this Power, concentrating on keeping your eye “single” on releasing this Power. As you speak the Word of truth about everything in your life, the Power goes forth and does the work. When you surrender to the idea that the Power is doing the perfect work, when you surrender yourself to become a perfect instrument through which it can work, when you become a mouthpiece directing it to that place where it is needed, only then can you be sure that your life will be perfect. As an instrument, you release the Power of God, and as a mouthpiece you speak to control its direction, the two perfect halves of a perfect whole.
The second idea is visualization. If you see empty space anywhere, you will not have any results worth mentioning in manifesting supply. If you are seeing empty cars, empty houses, empty stores, empty rooms, empty cupboards and empty purses, they will never be filled. You must then see everything as filled with activity, or some outer forms. Yet, it isn’t enough to see your own purse or wallet full of bills and gold, for the law is “Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.”–Luke 6:38. You can overcome this need by mentally reaching into your own pocket and purse to fill the purse of your friend or the wallet of anyone whom you meet on the street. You can always give from this invisible supply—just as Elijah left the widow of Zarephath with the “barrel of meal that wasted not and the cruse of oil that failed not,” so can you use this great law of visualization to increase your own supply.
That which you give, you shall receive. You may have nothing visible to give away right now, but you can surely give from the invisible substance that occupies the whole universe—right where you stand this moment. Everyone can see Niagara Falls. Anyone can see the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. You do not leave your body to go there, but use the faculty that everyone possesses: imagination. You can visualize anything if you try hard enough. Some have this faculty well-developed but others must work to develop it. However, everyone has the imagination to develop and use. The main idea to keep in mind about visualization is that you must have an unselfish, universal reason for the Power going into action for you. If the “gimmies” bother you—give me this and give me that—it will not work for you. It is only when you give that which you yourself desire that God can release it through you.
We have all heard people say, “I don’t care about money!” Indifference never brought anything to anyone—and it cannot be true at this present stage of development, for we all must use the symbol of God’s abundance, which we call money. No one can buy the fabric to make clothes without money. No one can get food without money. No one can ride in cars or on buses without money. If you do not earn the money that you pay for these things then it is true that someone else is doing it. Someone is earning money for the things that everyone wears and uses. Therefore, no one can honestly say that they do not care about money. Back of that statement is pride that you are not as other men are. Usually back of that is still another wrong emotion—hatred of being stuck in a place of lack and limitation.
Must you spend all your time to thinking about money? Are you to use all your time visualizing money? Most assuredly not, but being indifferent about money—prideful about not caring—or letting someone else do your “worrying” about it is just as negative as it is to be too eager about it. To underestimate it is just as definitely wrong as it is to overestimate it, and undervaluing it is just as wrong as overvaluing it. You have had God and joy, God and pleasures, God and houses and lands, God and clothes, God and money, and God and all sorts of things. Now you have One God in all, through all, as all. You may have no false god you call money.
Money now takes its rightful place in your life, and you use it without stinting, knowing that it is only the outer symbol of those inner riches that are yours to draw upon. You know that you are entitled, through your inheritance from the kingdom, to all that you can possibly use. “All things that the Father hath are mine.”–John 16:15. Everything the Father has is mine to use. Free yourself from all ideas of it not being the will of God that you have all that you need. Any good idea is God’s idea, and it is a good idea for you to be free to grow, unfold and take care of all your obligations.
The fourth idea in which you may have gone wrong in the past is that you think deep down within you that God probably cannot trust you with money. If you had an abundance of all good things, you might be inclined to forget who God really is, or you might get off the path, which you have held to with such great difficulty. Everything from the outside seems to try to carry you into other ways. Your friends sometimes seem to lead you far afield. You have already left the path so often to pick a few beautiful flowers, which soon fade, to chase a few brilliant butterflies.
Perhaps you are determined to keep your feet planted on the straight and narrow way, fearing that if you have too much ease and comfort, you will again fail to study and grow. Now, if you cannot trust yourself, how then can you imagine that God can trust you? If you are really afraid that you may fail, then how can God release the necessary Power through you? While you have the fear that you are not ready to be trusted with everything that the universe can supply in the way of abundant riches, just that long will you bar yourself from the kingdom of riches. God cannot trust you with anything that you cannot trust yourself to handle. Eventually, you reach the point in your development where you can stand up and say,
“Please send enough of the power of love through me to fulfill all the needs of my family and myself. Father, You can now trust me with the wealth of the Kingdom to distribute to the world. I am now ready to be used to release this Inner Abundance that shall relieve the whole of humanity. You can now trust me to use all that I need for myself and send the rest forth into the world.”
When you can also tell God that you are ready to receive the courage to stand steadfast where you are, that all you want is the Power to lift everything given to you daily to lift, that you no longer want to run away from your responsibility but desire to pour out enough love upon it to make it perfect, that you want to be responsible for all your family—as the angel said to Paul, “God hath given thee all them that sail with thee”—when you do this, then and then only will God send forth through you that release for all those about you.
Then you discover that He has only been waiting for this one thing—your own sense of ability to stand amid all outer challenges, calm and unmoved, steadfast and sure. You may even have thought with the rest of the world that because a few men have cornered vast wealth, you could not have very much. When you started on this great adventure of life, God sent you with all that you could possibly use or need through the whole of your period of living.
When you stepped into this visible form, you had to leave it just at your fingertips in the invisible. You and I are invisible to the world. All that the world sees is that radiance, which is Spirit. If you have not used the vast supply, which God gave to you, then it is still waiting to come forth for you. You are here to learn how to be a Master Creator—how to conquer self and to reach this invisible world. No one else of earth can possibly touch or bring into visibility one particle of that which vibrates only with your own vibration. It waits the magic touch of your spoken word to become! What? That which you desire and need.
This invisible substance, which we call supply, what is it? How do you know that a radio wave exists? Because just as you have to breathe invisible substance to continue living, so you must tune in to hear the signal in a radio wave. Scientific instruments measure, compute and tell us that these things are facts, then we must accept them and use them. Countless thousands of fruit trees stand idle and bare during one season of the year. Later they put forth tiny leaves, buds, flowers, and then produce the countless tons of fruit that we use. Where has the fruit come from? Out of the invisible into the visible. The tree is larger each year, but its growth does not diminish the orchard.
Countless acres of wheat fields, endless acres devoted to vegetables and berries, lay empty for months, then suddenly stalks, leaves, and later tons of wheat, vegetables and berries spring up. Where has it all come from? Out of the invisible into the visible, without diminishing the fields after the harvesting is finished. Farmers have used the fields for centuries and still they retain the same old level—the hills are still hills and the flat places are still flat. Countless sheep grow wool, which men shear each year and make into garments. Where does it come from? From the invisible into the visible, and the sheep grow no smaller, but reproduce!
Our paper money was once wood pulp, made from a tree that came from the invisible into the visible. Men dug gold and silver from the hills, which nature made from single atoms that extended and expanded—from the invisible into the visible. When will you really see it and know? When will you stop fussing and work to use that which is your own? When will you accept your own responsibility to create from this invisible substance of which God formed the whole earth? It is yours to use, yours to bring forth, yours to make and create into any outer form that you choose or desire.
You cannot destroy gold. The hotter you heat it, the more you purify it. The more you burn it, the greater its value. As you put it in the crucible and fire it, the dross comes to the surface and you remove it, leaving only the purified, perfect substance. The refiner knows when it is perfect, for he can see his own image reflected in it. When the fires of life purify you until God can look at you and see His own image and likeness reflected in you, then and then only will you have become a Master of life. Then and then only will you have become a conqueror of the Inner Kingdom, bringing its perfection into the outer realm of material form.
Whenever you decide to live by this perfect Godly Gold Standard every hour of the day, you shall be able to create the outer and visible signs of wealth. Whenever you lend yourself to the purifying process, through which all gold must go, then you shall be allowed to use all that you can imagine yourself enjoying.
“I am now ready to accept my own inheritance.”
“I am now ready to create my own abundant wealth.”
“I am now ready to surrender to this Power that works through me.”
“I am now ready to release all that Love that belongs to me.”
“I am now accepting everything that comes to me as refining fire to perfect me.”
“I am now being made perfect and pure gold of Spirit.”
Love as Creative Power
Edna Lister transcript, January, 11 1933, Clarissa A. Watkins, scribe.
Love is the almighty generating, activating, creating power of the universe. Love, when God-directed, which is good-directed, cannot fail to accomplish what it is sent to do for the good of others, the good of all humanity, for the Elect and for the evil-doers alike. You need only turn your attention to the person, condition or situation that needs changing, remedying or helping and love will direct that person, condition or situation in the way that God desires for the greatest good of all concerned. You may not be able to see any change in the person, condition or situation, but no matter; results are not your concern. “God’s will be done” should always be your will and desire. Learn to attune your will to God’s and before long you will begin to see simply stupendous changes occurring.
Fix the thought, the idea firmly in your consciousness that love is the activating, compelling motive behind all action, good or not good. Love’s power can impel a soul to choose a way that may be entirely foreign to what that soul intends or desires. Love, when projected in full faith, can instantly arrest another soul’s action to divert it from a course that is contrary to the Divine Will. Love neither knows nor recognizes evil, for love knows and recognizes only the good. Love is the Christ in action, the activating quality of Holy Spirit, the single greatest spiritual power that a soul may always set in motion. Love as action flows in the direction that your thinking sends it. Sadly, mankind has been using this power destructively, acting in ignorance and blindness to his undoing and disaster for many generations. Had man possessed the full knowledge of how to direct and control love’s power, while manipulating it for selfish ends, all mankind and the earth would have been destroyed long ago.
The power of love is terrific in its accomplishment for good—much more so than when directed to do evil. Love—when directed consciously, intelligently, definitely and applied with full knowledge and faith to a given end—works miracles through an unselfish soul who is endeavoring to carry out the will of the Father to establish the Kingdom of the Christ on earth. It’s the same principle as an electrical discharge. Lightning generates terrific energy—from hundreds of thousands to millions of volts—with tremendous heat, but accomplishes only destruction because it is random and chaotic, not directed or confined to a definite end. Thus the awful energy is expended vainly in the atmosphere and lost. By contrast, a few thousand volts, definitely directed, will light a city and run its many businesses and industries.
Do not expect immediate or definite results in applying love’s power at first. You are just studying and learning the greatest science of the universe, which constitutes the definite handling and manipulation of the most powerful basic energy of the whole universe, greater and much more subtle than physical electricity. Remember, love is a most terrible power and can be deadly if used improperly or for evil. Your self-discipline and duty now consist in placing yourself at the Father’s service completely, under the direction of the mind that was in Christ Jesus, not letting your reasoning faculties get in the way as you exercise this power at the Father’s behest. The Christ mind is ever at hand to give sanction to or interpretation of any undertaking that you are called upon to negotiate or to manifest. Act always in accord with the will of God in the name of Jesus Christ.
Accept now, once and for all, the fact that you must and will leave all habitual reaches of your imagination far behind. For the sooner you take command of your self and direct it in all-positive Godly ways, the sooner will God’s great Plan Salvation be aided into manifestation by the work the Father can accomplish through you. Renew your love daily!
Release the Indwelling Power
Edna Lister transcript, January 11, 1933, Clarissa A. Watkins, scribe.
From Genesis through the Book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ in the New Testament, the Bible unfolds the hidden wisdom of religion. Jesus openly taught this hidden wisdom through parables though many who came to hear him never understood what he was doing: “The same day went Jesus out of the house, and sat by the sea side. And great multitudes were gathered together unto him, so that he went into a ship, and sat; and the whole multitude stood on the shore. And he spake many things unto them in parables.”–Matthew 13:1-3. This is how Jesus first began to release the power of love dwelling within him.
“Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field: But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way. But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also. So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? From whence then hath it tares? He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.”–Matthew 13:24-30
The parable of the wheat and tares deals with how the soul of man, through his mind, conquers self and the world’s lure to gain the keys to open the gates of the kingdom of heaven. Earlier, Jesus had gone to the sea shore, where a huge crowd had gathered to hear him speak. He sat in a boat offshore and taught them in parables while they remained on shore to listen. The field Jesus refers to symbolizes the world. The “good seed” represents the highest mystical degree of the mind, substance and power of creation. The “tares” represent the lower self’s tendencies, impulses, habits and urges. Among the worst of these is misusing the power of the spoken Word in idle words. The love you release as you speak the Word for good casts the worthless tares into the fiery furnace. As you release the power of love, you also call forth the trouble that comes to you, which originated while you were still living in the “eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” stage of unrighteous judgment. The “enemy” here represents the world mind, which is like a radio station poorly tuned-in, blaring static negativity. You tune into this worldly “backwash” automatically when you worry, doubt, or think about anything less than the good and the beautiful. The “harvest” refers to those souls who have conquered self by the end of the world, the end of this age, the Adamic civilization, which some say began 200,000 years ago.
“I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder: and I heard the voice of harpers harping with their harps: And they sung as it were a new song before the throne, and before the four beasts, and the elders: and no man could learn that song but the hundred and forty and four thousand, which were redeemed from the earth.”–Revelation 14:2-3. The number 144,000 is mystical, a symbol of what we, as the Elect, are now doing, creating unity among ourselves and with God at the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual levels. We are among the first wave, the avant-garde, the vanguard of spiritual pioneers in this age.
“I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come: and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.”–Revelation 14:6-7. The angel described in Revelation 14:6-7 represents purified thinking and thoughts. You must purify your thoughts before you can speak pure words. God gave us freedom to choose our path in life, and by His own law He may not interfere with us or with the choices we make. Whenever you use the power of love in the spoken Word, sending it forth to do something good, you free the Father to send angels to lift the downtrodden, or to destroy and cast into the fire that which offends.
“And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone.”–Revelation 19:20. “And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night forever and ever.”–Revelation 20:10. The lake of fire and brimstone also refers to the power of love you release as you speak the Word for God to act. Forever is the duration of an intensely lived experience.
“Forever is the duration of an intensely lived experience.”-Edna Lister
Every day is the Judgment Day, and you are your own judge. You must judge yourself by every word you utter, for every word you use places you in the scale of evolution. You are destined to be a radiant light, but sometimes you shout loudest when you are making a black blotch, not living according to the tenets of your Christed heritage. The kingdom of heaven is right here, right now. Its riches will shine forth when you rightly use your faculties, the mental and soul powers within you, and surrender self to serve the Power of God. He designed you to be the mouthpiece of the Word that produces good results, to send the power of love directly to fill the needs of the many. Declare, “I am now creating divine harmony and establishing divine activity! I am divinely inspired with ideas! I am divinely sent to the right place, where I am needed, here and now!”
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind: which, when it was full, they drew to shore, and sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away.”–Matthew 13:47-48. The dragnet cast into the sea typifies your family life, the life of a business, an organization, or of a group. You must accept the whole catch, then separate the good from the not-so-good. Finally, you save the good and cast the waste into the fiery furnace of love. When you wonder why this task has fallen to you, remember that you may be the only person in the whole world whom God can use to speak the Word to lift some other needy soul onto a cloud continent of Light at that moment.
Expanding Your Mind
Edna Lister transcript, January 16, 1933, Tacoma, WA, Clarissa A. Watkins, scribe.
“As oil mingles with oil, as water mingles with water, as air mingles with air, so does my life expand and mingle with the life of God.” Nobody can take this spiritual unity with God from you. Beyond the physical, your body is spiritual, indivisible, and indestructible. Consciousness resides in the Light, which is the substance of your soul’s life sparks. You always have the means of escaping life’s pain and trouble at hand. You can use God’s truth and conquer self’s reaction. Resentment usually prevents you from receiving the result you want, so hold the resentment up to God, and let His love pour through to dissolve it. A dynamic statement for this is, “I have the living truth of God and I am living God’s truth!”
Live what you know, this is part of your responsibility in working out your own soul’s salvation. “Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.”–Philippians 2:12. Do this so that when the time of testing comes, you can easily stand on the truth.
You cannot afford to miss your daily period of Silence, for it’s a real soul-strengthener. Make the Silence a definite daily practice, a rule to obey before you study, for it will awaken new brain cells. The successful conqueror of self observes this daily. “As oil mingles with oil, as water mingles with water, as air mingles with air, so does my life expand and mingle with the life of God.”
Look in a mirror into your own eyes and say to your impulsive wayward subconscious mind, “I am finished with this foolishness. I am building a new heart, eyes (or whatever). You are building this for me and I desire its perfection to manifest here and now.” What hurts you the worst is always the impulse from within the self. The power of love is the key to the universe; you hold it within you, but you must use it. Hold every difficulty up to God as you stand in His Light where the power of love can melt, dissolve and absorb it.
Close your eyes—imagine yourself within the heart of a radiant sphere of Light. Open yourself to God, which draws you more fully into the Light. Within this Light you live and move and have your being. This moment you are touching the innermost Light that is—that Light that goes forth and accomplishes, which radiates, makes perfect, whole and complete, which is divine, all-knowing and all-seeing. That Light is yours now. You are the Light now, and the Light goes forth to accomplish perfection.
A Prayer for the Silence: O, Father, open Thou the mind of each soul gathered here to receive Thy great illumination and revelation. Lift us that we may be fully surrendered to Thee. In this very moment we are open and ready to receive, and we know that we shall be given in great measure, pressed down and running over to share. So it is and so it shall manifest!
We are now dealing with how to expand individual mind, as intellect specifically, not as psychology, which deals with the soul’s expression through emotions. Psychology is not yet an exact science, but is only in its infancy, becoming a science. The University of California and other institutions of learning are experimenting, trying to make psychology a science. The field of psychology has been and is the source of a great deal of confusion and conflict among scientists and writers because of the vagueness about the claims they make and the terms they use.
The Categories of Your Soul’s Expression
In our study of God as man, we pay special attention to five essential facets of truth, five approaches to mind—psychology, metaphysics, science, philosophy, and mysticism. Understanding their nature and their relation to one another is the key to successful living. You use these five facets of mind every day without necessarily being aware of them.
Psychology is the study of the immortal soul, which, when embodied, serves as relative subjective mind, and its operation within us as subconscious and rational consciousness. Psychology’s province includes our immaterial essence, our individuality. The soul is mind and your mind is your soul. Unfortunately, psychology is now equating the soul mainly with self, self-ness, and selfishness, rather than with its primary nature, which is divine.
Metaphysics deals with the nature of being and is objective abstract study of invisible mind “out there,” and its principles and laws, which operate just beyond our physical abilities to perceive, to see and hear. Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy we use to explain how and why things operate the way they do.
Science deals with the principles and laws governing the orderly working of the physical universe. Science measures, numbers and weighs physical things as it seeks to relate facts, one to another, with the mathematics of the subject. Science constantly strives to make our knowledge more exact and concrete, which is why science is ever becoming more materialistic and non-theistic. Science has embraced the doctrine of homo mensura,
or man is the measure
of all things.
Philosophy, (from Greek, by way of Latin, philosophia, “love of wisdom”) the rational, abstract, and methodical consideration of reality as a whole or of fundamental dimensions of human existence and experience. Philosophy deals with first principles and the laws of being that govern the universe.
Mysticism deals with the contemplation of and communion with the Godhead as Light, God, Mind, Power, and pure Being. If you leave out any of these five phases of truth, your understanding will be incomplete.
Subconscious mind is the servant, not the master. You may truly say that “I am complete here and now in the substance of Light,” insofar as you express these categories of mind, but you are not expressing all there is of any one of them. Yet you can express your share of the mind of Christ without limits if you lift it up above the plane of the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind deals only with the instinctive facets of mind, the impulses, urges and appetites of the embodied soul.
The super-conscious mind is a purely psychological term. “Oversoul” is a philosophical term. The I AM is a metaphysical term for the super-conscious mind. Science might call this phase of mind “the differentiated within the undifferentiated,” or the “differentiation of the undifferentiated.” Philosophy calls it “being” or “reality.” The mystical terms are many, among which is “Oversoul,” a term both philosophical and mystical. “Christ consciousness” or “Christ mind” are mystical terms. Other terms applied to an embodied soul include “ego” and “entity” and these are both used in philosophy and psychology. The terms “subconscious mind” and “appetitive soul” refer to the same thing because mind is soul and soul is mind.
Originally, we came forth from on high in an ark of consciousness on an arc of involution down through the Milky Way to take on human form in order to gain experience. Before this, we were unconscious individualized manifestations of God. The secret of being, life, and spirit, has lain in the use of two terms, “conscious” and “unconscious.” Adam and Eve had become conscious individualized manifestations of God in an earlier Day of Manifestation. We came here to acquire knowledge and to gain consciousness while being embodied.
The undifferentiated God is all-knowing, has all knowledge, all potential but not all actual experience or consciousness, both of which are acquired from being in relationships with other forms of consciousness. So God had all love and all wisdom but was unable to express without having someone with whom to share it. The manifestation of that one great Godhead brings us to the place where love and wisdom may be expressed consciously. An unconscious expression of wisdom and love does not have the inestimable potential and value of a conscious expression.
The Mind of all Wisdom desired to know the countless variations and combinations that can express when the soul is embodied and given freedom to choose its own path. What one soul experiences and knows propagates through the whole universe to inform The One and then the many. So you must always send love as the closing vibration to whatever else you have sent forth. Say, “Let love go forth over every line of contact I have ever established.” Thus, you add a direct cable over which love is riding, everywhere you have ever been. You have now become a center of life, through which love shall be transmitted to all. You cannot escape the love of God. It consumes all dross, and burns out any taints and imperfections. And this Light-as-Power is always seeking a channel through which to manifest and express.
Think of the universe as the body of God; the solar systems and planets are the organs, and the embodied souls are the cells. Think of the universe is a great Being of Light. Universal Spirit dwells in all and in everything as divine Mind. Where Love and Wisdom focus and intersect, a baby star is born. Each soul is assigned to a star.
Now when all the gods, both those who revolve manifestly (i.e. the stars; the others are the deities of popular belief, such as Homer depicts) and those who manifest themselves so far as they choose, had come to birth, He that generated this All addressed them thus:
“Gods of gods (an intensive form of expression, like the Biblical “King of kings and Lord of lords”), those works whereof I am framer and father are indissoluble save by my will. For though all that is bound may be dissolved, yet to will to dissolve that which is fairly joined together and in good case were the deed of a wicked one. Wherefore ye also, seeing that ye were generated, are not wholly immortal or indissoluble, yet in no wise shall ye be dissolved nor incur the doom of death, seeing that in my will ye possess a bond greater and more sovereign than the bonds wherewith, at your birth, ye were bound together. Now, therefore, what I manifest and declare unto you do ye learn. Three mortal kinds (viz. the inhabitants of air, of water, and of earth) still remain ungenerated; but if these come not into being the Heaven will be imperfect; for it will not contain within itself the whole sum of the hinds of living creatures, yet contain them it must if it is to be fully perfect. But if by my doing these creatures came into existence and partook of life, they would be made equal unto gods; in order, therefore, that they may be mortal and that this World—all may be truly All, do ye turn yourselves, as Nature directs, to the work of fashioning these living creatures, imitating the power showed by me in my generating of you. Now so much of them as it is proper to designate ‘immortal,’ the part we call divine which rules supreme in those who are fain to follow justice always and yourselves, that part I will deliver unto you when I have sown it and given it origin. For the rest, do ye weave together the mortal with the immortal, and thereby fashion and generate living creatures, and give them food that they may grow, and when they waste away receive them to yourselves again.”
Thus He spake, and once more into the former bowl, wherein He had blended and mixed the Soul of the Universe, He poured the residue of the previous material, mixing it in somewhat the same manner, yet no longer with a uniform and invariable purity, but second and third in degree of purity. And when He had compounded the whole He divided it into souls equal in number to the stars, and each several soul He assigned to one star, and setting them each as it were in a chariot (cf. Laws 899a) He showed them the nature of the Universe, and declared unto them the laws of destiny,—namely, how that the first birth should be one and the same ordained for all, in order that none might be slighted by Him; and how it was needful that they, when sown each into his own proper organ of time (i.e. star), should grow into the most god-fearing of living creatures; and that, since human nature is two-fold {man and woman},…by virtue of Necessity, they should be implanted in bodies, and their bodies are subject to influx and efflux, these results would necessarily follow,—firstly, sensation that is innate and common to all proceeding from violent affections; secondly, desire mingled with pleasure and pain; and besides these, fear and anger and all such emotions as are naturally allied thereto, and all such as are of a different and opposite character. And if they shall master these they will live justly, but if they are mastered, unjustly. And he that has lived his appointed time well shall return again to his abode in his native star, and shall gain a life that is blessed and congenial but whoso has failed therein shall be changed… according to the nature of his wickedness, into some bestial form after the similitude of his own nature; nor in his changings shall he cease from woes until he yields himself to the revolution of the Same and Similar that is within him, and dominating by force of reason that burdensome mass which afterwards adhered to him of fire and water and earth and air, a mass tumultuous and irrational, returns again to the semblance of his first and best state.
When He had fully declared unto them all these ordinances, to the end that He might be blameless in respect of the future wickedness of any one of them, He proceeded to sow them, some in the Earth, some in the Moon, others in the rest of the organs of Time. Following upon this sowing, He delivered over to the young gods the task of molding mortal bodies, and of framing and controlling all the rest of the human soul which it was still necessary to add, together with all that belonged thereto, and of governing this mortal creature in the fairest and best way possible, to the utmost of their power, except in so far as it might itself become the cause of its own evils.
So He, then, having given all these commands, was abiding in His own proper and wonted state. And as He thus abode, His children gave heed to their Father’s command and obeyed it. They took the immortal principle of the mortal living creature, and imitating their own Maker, they borrowed from the Cosmos portions of fire and earth and water and air, as if meaning to pay them back, and the portions so taken they cemented together; but it was not with those indissoluble bonds wherewith they themselves were joined that they fastened together the portions but with numerous pegs, invisible for smallness; and thus they constructed out of them all each several body, and within bodies subject to inflow and outflow they bound the revolutions of the immortal Soul. The souls, then, being thus bound within a mighty river {the River of Life} neither mastered it nor were mastered, but with violence they rolled along and were rolled along themselves, so that the whole of the living creature was moved, but in such a random way that its progress was disorderly and irrational, since it partook of all the six motions (i.e. omitting the seventh motion (“rotation”), cf. 34a): for it progressed forwards and backwards, and again to right and to left, and upwards and downwards, wandering every way in all the six directions.
Seeking Soul Inspiration: Universal divine Mind is spiritual but includes everything manifest and unmanifest. The Oversoul super-conscious mind uses the embodied soul’s conscious mind as its functioning agent in the world. The conscious mind is that portion of divine Mind that is manifesting within a body, the temple of the living God. “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?”–1 Corinthians 3:16. There is, in truth, only one Mind, the mind that was in Christ Jesus, in other words, the superconscious mind of the Oversoul, or I AM consciousness. So declare, “I AM a radiant, spiritual being of Light.” Live this in the Silence, and if anything goes wrong, remain silent and smile, knowing that God bring all things together for good.
At night the subconscious mind is in control, so before you retire, use this drill to train the subconscious in what you want it to do: “I (Name), am now ready for my new position, my perfect health,” or whatever good that you desire. Then repeat: “As oil mingles with oil, as water mingles with water, as air mingles with air, so does my life expand and mingle with the life of God.” When you retire, relax and extend your consciousness to the sun until you can feel the warmth, then say, “I am now extended in consciousness to my sun center of Light. I stand at the heart of my own sun center of consciousness. My body is perfect. I hold the perfect position for earning and creating everything I need by the grace and goodness of God. I want every revelation I shall receive this the night to register on my conscious brain cells so that I can easily and perfectly recall it tomorrow morning.”
In the morning, give your subconscious an opportunity to recall what it has registered, then ask if it has any ideas to give you for the day. The subconscious mind cannot think; it can only make deductions or reach a conclusion. It is able to find lost articles because it can read all that is in the planet’s “world mind.” However, you shortcut all this and the long, slow spiral pathway to the Father when you decide to go through the realms on the arrow-straight path of Christ, surrounded by the white Light of Christ. You only need to say that you want the information at the feet of Christ himself, and ask to tune in on his teaching.
(Someone asked about why the subconscious mind does not think.) You think from the mind, but receive impressions as stimuli from the body’s senses. For example, write your name while looking at the pen and paper and thinking about what you are doing, and see how perfectly you write. This is apperception from the superconscious mind, the seat of control in the top of the head. Then, write your name while watching and listening to someone who is speaking across the room or while in some noisy place. Examine and compare the results of your efforts. The latter is the work of the body Senses of subconscious mind at the The Solar Plexus or Abdominal Brain, the mind below your eyebrows.
With your hands raised in the Silence, send forth the Power of love that fills the whole body with Light. Enter your chamber of silence, carrying Light to every cell of the body, melting, dissolving, absorbing and transforming it into God’s infinite perfection. Declare, “Increase my capacity to love, to release the Power of love. Increase my loyalty to principle.” Repeat “As oil mingles with oil,” etc. Work to have everything you should know, given to you tonight. Ask for selfless love and loyalty. Always exhibit a sweet graciousness, do not pity yourself, and you cannot avoid lifting your whole family. Radiate kindness and it will create in you the ability to lift people with a sense that it is your privilege to do so. The Light goes into action as Power and the person is lifted and influenced by good.
As you enter the Silence, bring all your near and dear ones into view with your mind’s eye. Hold them up, and have a sense that you are putting your fingers over the troubled part of the body, the stomach, head, or at whatever point they are weak. After lifting, speak the word and Light as the power of love does the work. With closed eyes and relaxed mind, know that you are one with all, that you are a radiant being of Light, that you can release the power of love. This power goes forth, fills your body, and mind with inspiration, illumination and understanding.
“The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field: which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.”–Matthew 13:31-32. The seed has complete faith in its ability to expand, and grow, in full surrender to that inner urge, it expands and grows and produces thousands of other mustard trees. Take a lesson from the lily, and live for today, not yesterday or tomorrow. Give the world service, one day at a time. It is always early, and never too late; you just haven’t quite arrived yet. God may cut a soul’s life short if his life has been harder than warranted and he has been asking for and earned release from the body.
Remember Whose you are and Whom you serve and change your attitude to match your soul’s stature. You are responsible for all those on your ship. Paul was sent to report to Caesar. Every soul must be brought before Caesar, who represents earthly justice. You must expand, grow, express, and disintegrate form to pass into something higher. Despite years, now is the time to expand. Those who need your help are sent to you. Joy and sweetness are the leaven. Keep your mouth closed unless you can express sweetness and joy. Use the dynamite of love on darkness, saying, “Let the power of love go forth to clear away this condition of darkness,” but say it gently, sweetly and lovingly.
Faith is complete ability to grow and unfold, expand and enfold. You get your reward not from people, but in your increased ability to express your manifold gifts. If you are to do something that requires twenty years’ work, what does it matter which twenty years you devote, the twenty years of your youth, or twenty years of your more mature years? It matters not. Mind your own business, or better still, be about your Father’s business, letting joy permeate everyone and everything. How you picture the task ahead represents your idea of your personal responsibility. Love is now the guiding power of evolution. We are in the Golden Age, and must learn to love in perfection.
Keep in mind the five approaches to God: psychology, metaphysics, science, philosophy, and mysticism. Segregate and classify ideas according to these categories whenever you hear a lecture, read, or study a book. Relate all the new knowledge to what you already have gained. Philosophy postulates a point, one God, one Mind, one Substance, then builds a bridge to psychology. Metaphysics deals with the the unseen, which is here in us, and throughout manifestation. All wisdom comes from God, and the spiritually unmanifest God is immensely greater than the materially manifest God.
We are now standing in the Light, a radiant sun center of Light. In this very moment you are the center of a radiant being of Light. You are wide open to receive this inner revelation and the power of God’s love, which you can express. You are a seeker after truth, after the hidden wisdom religion of the universe. It is being revealed in this very moment and it shall be poured out in great measure, pressed down and overflowing. You are open to receive it. Let your eyes be opened to see, your ears to hear, and your brain cells to register this revelation. Amen.
All revelation comes through the super-conscious mind, the I AM consciousness, the mind that was in Christ Jesus. It is the individualized indwelling mind, the manifestation of the whole, which is the seat of the soul. The conscious mind is the functioning part of the super-conscious mind operating through the brain cells, indwelling and penetrating into every cell of the body. Philosophy calls it the rational soul. The subconscious mind maintains the physical metabolism through the central nervous system, glands, and organs; and philosophy calls it the impulsive appetitive soul. All Mind is Spirit here and now. The three facets of mind that you share are really one, each being in charge of a different phase of the one individualized mind called the living soul.
Your body has near countless cells and each carries memory impressions. The subconscious mind is the repository of this ancestral stream, which forms the background of heredity. The first two parent cells, the sperm and ovum, expand their substance and extend their burgeoning consciousness to four, the four to eight, and so on, until the memory capacity for consciousness is completely formed and interpenetrated by the subconscious mind. Through this living network, you are subject to impressions, repressions, complexes, obsessions, illusions, and hallucinations. If any of these affect you, sit in silence and reason it out by the light of day. Complexes are built of unconscious impressions and experiences. An infant in the cradle is open to every vibration from family or the whole neighborhood. You’ve brought with you all the ideas and impressions planted in your mind when you were a child.
Every repression will eventually break out, crying to be healed. You will have to work out every idea implanted in your mind. How do you heal this? Surround every infant you see with divine love. Imagine that it is cocooned in Light, surrounded with a wall of fire, which nothing inimical can penetrate, and declare it so. For every unborn child, declare that a wall of love surrounds its body and no expression or repression from the mother’s mind can make it less than perfect. This circle of fire protects the soul.
The Golden Silence
Edna Lister transcript, January 20, 1933, Tacoma, WA, Clarissa A. Watkins, scribe.
Before entering the Silence for healing, especially for the laying on of hands, you must have a formula, a definite scientific statement of intention. The Silence is not mere concentration. If you enter the Silence with a statement, say for example, “As oil mingles with oil, as water mingles with water, as air mingles with air, so does my life expand and mingle with the Life of God,” it makes you far more God-conscious.
For the laying on of hands, holding your right hand above the place in need of healing is best. Always analyze or classify this and all other ideas presented to you according to the five categories—psychology, metaphysics, science, philosophy, mysticism—which are the five phases of truth, and consider their relation to each other.
Close your eyes and reach up to the Most High. Hold to the conviction that you are being drawn into the heart of Light. This is the attitude to have: In this heart of Light, we have become one with each other and with all that is, here and now. We are opening our minds to receive great inspiration and illumination, and the Truth of the Universe shall be revealed unto us in this moment, revelation beyond anything previous.
A Prayer for Silence: O Father of all Light and Glory, let our eyes be opened to see. Let that which is our own good appear. Let our own good be poured out upon us this very hour, and thank Thee that it shall be so. Amen.
You can get to God only through love. Love is the key, the magic wand, that opens the way, the two-way door that also lets love flow forth. There is as definite a method and technique for entering the Silence, as there is to mathematics, so you must go through a certain process. You have probably tried to make your mind a vacuum and found it impossible to do so. No one can make his mind a vacuum and still have a mind! Your conscious mind is the mediating function of mind that operates between the subconscious and the superconscious facets.
In the Silence you automatically tune in on the subconscious mind first since it is body-based. This is why you must always remember to give your subconscious mind suggestions immediately preceding sleep and immediately before awakening to full consciousness in the morning. Give it a chance to register its ideas, and to give the superconscious mind a chance to register its instructions on your brain cells. The subconscious mind is the phase that reminds you of things. At night, give it the opportunity to register what it wants you to remember. Try to listen to the subconscious mind—hold back, and hold back to keep that link open as long as you are able to, as though you are exercising a muscle. Listen in, and train it to listen to and reproduce super-conscious thoughts. See what the revelations are in the morning, then listen for the super-conscious. Don’t try to make your mind a blank, or a vacuum. You cannot get into the Silence with tense nerves and muscles, or relax while you are tensing the muscles to concentrate. Yet you can get into the heart of the Silence by complete surrender—it takes relaxation to surrender.
Both the subconscious and conscious phases of mind are designed to be the servants of the super-conscious mind, the soul’s point of contact with the mind of Christ. When entering the Silence, say, “As oil mingles with oil, as water mingles with water, as air mingles with air, so does my life expand and mingle with the Life of God.” Another good statement is, “The kingdom of heaven is everywhere evenly present and available. I am in the kingdom of heaven now, and the kingdom of heaven is within me.” It took me five years to learn to enter the Silence this way. One of the first inner initiations is to be able to enter the Silence anytime. Through such daily practice, I have reached the place where I can enter the Silence while using my hands to work at something I do not have to think about. So I know that you are able to do this also! The subconscious follows the hands and leaves the mind free. Activity intrigues and lifts it to become one with the superconscious. We cannot get into the Silence if we have any resentment in our minds.
If, during the Silence, your subconscious urges you to an action or injects some image into your mind, write it down on a pad. The subconscious mind is your personal adversary in consciousness, the resistance you need to improve your skills and abilities. This is why you should “agree with your adversary quickly,” and say, “My subconscious mind is a marvelous servant. I appreciate the ideas it brings me, but I have no time for it now. I shall lay it right here on the altar. I am entering the Silence, and when I am finished with that, it will remind me of it again.”
You should love your subconscious mind as though it were a toddler and lift it up to a higher degree of controlled awareness. However, do not treat your subconscious as though it is separate from you! It is your servant. The instant any doubt, fear or any urge or impulse that is negative or unlike God arises, lift it up to the Light as you would a fussy infant—lift it to God and agree that it is good! If your stomach hurts, declare that it is a perfect stomach. Declare your brain to be a perfectly marvelous brain, constantly and definitely perfect in its awareness and operation. Let no opportunity to praise God for the perfection of your mind or body escape you—praise God!
You must take nine steps to enter the Silence:
1. Speak a statement of surrender, such as, “As oil mingles with oil,” etc., or “The kingdom of heaven is within me,” etc.
2. Deliberately relax your nerves and muscles.
3. Take a few deep breaths.
4. Bring to mind and hold an idea so great that it envelops everything.
5. Imagine, envision a picture to follow the idea.
6. Offer praise and devotion until you can think of no more.
7. Speak the Word for prayer treatments.
8. Again offer praise and devotion, and wait in quiet gratitude.
9. Speak the Word given you in the name of the Master.
To begin, sit, lie down, or stand (shoulders back) comfortably. (I use a straight-backed chair.) Do not put your hands in your lap. Lift them, palms up, to begin with, until they tingle. Then hold your hands, palms slightly cupped, turned inward, level with your ears to form a chalice for Light to fill. When you feel full of Light,
1. Make a statement such as, “As oil mingles with oil, as water mingles with water, as air mingles with air, so does my life expand and mingle with the Life of God.” Or, “The kingdom of heaven is everywhere evenly present and available. I am in the kingdom of heaven now, and the kingdom of heaven is within me.”
The Silence exists everywhere as an elevated level of consciousness. You can enter it anytime, or anywhere, since you, your soul, is always in it anyway. As you turn your attention to it, surrender to it. It takes all of your concentration to keep yourself surrendered to it. Keep your spine straight, which is imperative.
2. As I enter the Silence, I lift everything and everyone who is on my lines of Light and responsibility for lifting. Take three or four deep breaths, then reach out your arms and gather together all burdens for prayer. and lift. Lifting uses or involves the subconscious as it follows the hands, and causes it not to interrupt.
3. Actively send forth the Power: As you lift your hands in an attitude of surrender (palms slightly cupped, turned inward, level with your ears), it aids you in opening your sense of selflessness and surrender to God.
Concentration is purely mental, and you can concentrate only through focusing your will. However, any mental force you use or send out on your tone of voice or words you speak, returns to you like a boomerang. One teacher warned his pupils that if they sent out the law, or raw power, to be ready to take it on the chin when it returned, or it would knock them down. Lifting your hands up switches power from will’s seat of control at the solar plexus, to the heart, the seat of control of desire as love. Thus, you doubly harness the subconscious, will directs the gesture of your hands to hold its attention, then you release it as love, from the heart center. This is how you harness the subconscious and hold it under control, and free all the Power you will need to release to send it forth, flowing freely to do its appointed work.
4. Again take several deep breaths (from three to seven) to connect and surrender to the Light. Say: “I now inhale the illumination of the Almighty, I now inhale the inspiration of the All-wise, of the All-love, I am now inhaling the breath of God.” This is the connecting rod to lift you into the heart of the Silence.
5. Think of an expansive idea, one so great that it just takes all of your attention, an idea of God, a supreme idea, such as: “The glory of God fills the entire universe and in this glory I am now perfect, whole and complete.”
6. See your solar plexus as a sphere of fire that is radiating through every part of your body. That idea is great enough to intrigue your subconscious mind and your attention, emotions, and imagination to the point where you will build the picture of your idea. Picture a gorgeous sunset, the Grand Canyon, the Milky Way, or try to see something that is invisible.
7. Voice your praise and devotion to God: Praise God that He is, that He is all the Mind there is, that He holds the world in the hollow of His hand, that He is the great invisible, irresistible all-glorious One, that He is the repository of all hidden wisdom, that He holds your life in His hands, that He is the Source of all revelations, has held you from the beginning of time and shall do so throughout eternity. And so on and so on. This is how to enter the Heart of God and the Silence through praise and devotion.
Read Psalms 33 and 34 for inspiration. Praise God because He is the heart of this radiant Light, that He can release His Power through you, can melt and dissolve every imperfection, that you have the Power to hold up any number of people, for the Light and Love that pours out upon them. Praise Him that you can hold the world up to him. See yourself as holding Terra in the palms of your own hand, giving it to Him. Lift and lift and lift! and praise Him all the time. As you praise God, you will find something happening. You have the sense of leaving the earth, the sense of an extended consciousness. Enter the Silence once this way, and you will hunger and thirst for it evermore.
8. When you have finished praising until you have no more words, you are completely in the Heart of the Silence. Then turn your hands facing outward and begin your treatments. Do not treat yourself—take others, see them standing before you, facing you. Surround them with a sphere of Light, fill their bodies with Light, see a cone of light from their feet to the center of earth, their sphere capped with another cone of Light to their Oversoul star of contact with God. Surround them with pillars of fire, then with a wall of love. See a mother blue light of love permeating everyone and everything. Have a sense of laying your hands over their eyes. Do this until you cannot find any more people to lift, treat and speak the Word for. Speak the Word for them, then send it out, radiate it out over the whole world!
9. Then discontinue treating, and thank God and praise Him that He has increased your capacity to love and to release power. Thank Him that the power of love has already gone forth. Thank Him that you can be as the lepers named in the Bible, in that you can go your way rejoicing, willing to surrender to His service. Thank Him that you are His mouthpiece, and your words are established forever. Do not ask to be lifted—thank God that you are lifted into the heart of the fire, that He has armored you with light. Praise Him continually because He is perfect, and again tell Him that He is perfect. Then speak the Word, in the name of the Master.
“These words are the spirit of life” is the closing declaration: “These words are spirit and they are life. These words are now established. These words are now finished in the kingdom and they shall become visible. Let them come to pass. Let them come into manifestation. Let them be established, Let these words go forth and do the work.” The word “let” is the release of the Power. If you remain in the Silence all day, you cannot falter or fail.
There is no special place to ask God for anything for yourself. You may beforehand ask God specially for what you desire. Then when you enter the Silence, thank Him that His Light has recharged your Oversoul star with power, that He has given to you the charge to release Light as the power of love throughout the world and so on. Repeat your declarations that you have already received what you want, have already received the desires of your heart.
By taking these steps in their exact order each time you enter the Silence you train your consciousness at every level—subconscious, conscious and super-conscious/impulsive appetitive soul, rational soul and Oversoul—you can remain in the Silence all the time, you no longer will be body-conscious, and you will forget the outer world. Yet you must practice until you become unconscious of using the technique because it will be automatic.
Get on the Receiving End of Life
Edna Lister transcript, January 23, 1933, Tacoma, WA, Clarissa A. Watkins, scribe.
As a child I decided. that a “fairy godmother” is a seemingly bad thing which causes good in the end. Delay, which one cannot help, is good because it can make you aware of influences that would have wrecked your plans had you proceeded unchecked. When you reach the place where you understand that All things are good now!
then you know that the law works every influence and delay together and brings good out of it all. This pays you dividends in experience and comprehension of how God works as law in your life. Every time you feel
an inner conviction that it is good, it will turn out to be good. No matter the appearance, if you just look ahead and pronounce it good, the minds of everyone involved will be reconstructed to know the good.
“And it shall come to pass, that before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear.”-Isaiah 65:24. This moment in our lives was finished and completed in the Divine Mind, millions of years ago, and it is only our ideas that it was not, that have withheld it from becoming form here and now, today. Thank God in this moment for the finished kingdom, for that kingdom of perfection which has always been pure, which is only yours, which is glorious and complete. Let us bring in more situations, more plans to be completed in this hour. We declare that they are finished and that they shall come forth and shine! We are open of mind and heart and ready to receive that which is our own. It is so, and it shall come to pass as spoken. Amen.
Love is the highway to perfection, and you must travel in a vehicle made of the faith of God in action. This is a healing technique that incorporates five steps. First is the firm foundation in faith and in knowledge that both faith and love are of one substance and that substance is God. The faith and love of God descend upon us as the Christ mind enfolded within the Holy Spirit to dwell in us and among us.
Mother God of Love Father God of Wisdom
▾
Son of Selflessness
All three elements of creation—Wisdom, Love and Selflessness—must be present for healing because none of them can work without the others. We are all made of stardust—sparks of light added to countless millions of tiny particles of the same substance of Light come together, coalesce—and a star is born! Love and Wisdom are the parents.
To pray effectively, put up your hands and talk to God! Tell Him who you are, how much you love Him, and ask Him all about what He is using you to do. Raise your hands, palms turned outward level with your shoulders to open and protect your heart center. Why? If you keep your hands in your lap, or hold them together in the praying hands
position, you drag the vibration down. You release love through your heart center, so keep your hands raised and open. With your hands held high \0/ over your head, declare, “Father, let my very own good appear!”
Love is a power and the substance of all that is, not a mere earthly sentiment. You first experience love through your emotions and desires, which are subject to the corruption of self and the effects of negative experiences. Yet you must send love forth in purity, so lay your desires upon an altar of fire so that the flames of the Holy Spirit can purify them. Then, and this is important, leave your desires in His hands! Mind is the working agent of wisdom’s power and is also the director and controller of love’s substance. Love is the guiding principle of the evolution of mind, the ascension of consciousness. Faith is a pure substance, and a soul faculty. Through faith you use God’s Mind as your vehicle of knowing. Faith is your conductor of power—your faith in God returns to you as the substance and power with which you may act in His name.
When you surrender to God’s Light as Power, you release your soul from bondage to self, and in that instant you may release many other souls from their bondage to the world of material things. Declare Let love go forth through every situation. Let love go through every room in every home in the city.
The sacrificial fires you light this way are limitless in their power to heal and make whole. Enough Light added restores the soul’s integrity. When you surrender self to the power of God’s love, your sacrifice of self releases many other souls and their desires, all those who are close to you in degree and kind.
You release love into the world as both a vibration and a substance, complete in seven grades. By the power of the Word you speak, love goes forth on wings of Light, and flows out through your hands, under the law of correspondence, “As above, so below.” The law says Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.
Thus, you create the forms of your own “added things” with the substance that returns to you. What you get in life is what you have created.
This is the age of the Elect’s wakening to the mind that was in Christ Jesus. We have the mind of Christ. We are the kingdom, not merely in it! We shall step from one plane to another in conquering self and ascension of consciousness. To do this we must send love forth in its purity, untainted by self. Moses won battles with raised hands, so we raise our hands because we release love’s power through the heart center. The plagues on Egypt, the pillar of smoke by day and the pillar of fire by night, water in the wilderness—all these were manifestations of the power of God’s love, which created a magic circle of protection for His children, Israel. The greater your invocation of love, the greater your responsibility—you must not misuse the Power.
Better than judging unrighteously is to judge not at all. Impersonal love is a searchlight that reveals the truth without fail. “Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.”-John 7:24 Lift those who believe they are your enemies, but without any need to tell them of it. You are under no compulsion to take back into your life anything or anyone who has ever left you; you need only lift them up to the Light, according to your ability, remembering that whatever you resent is your master. Love is the only way you can fulfill the law. As a ship's captain ties himself to the helm during a storm, bind yourself to the highest vibration of the Master’s voice, and speak in his name.
Your Royal Birthright
Edna Lister transcript, January 24, 1933, Tacoma, WA, Clarissa A. Watkins, scribe; Psalm 33:1-8, Psalm 34:1-3.
“Rejoice in the Lord, O ye righteous: for praise is comely for the upright. Praise the Lord with harp: sing unto him with the psaltery and an instrument of ten strings. Sing unto him a new song; play skilfully with a loud noise. For the word of the Lord is right; and all his works are done in truth. He loveth righteousness and judgment: the earth is full of the goodness of the Lord. By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. He gathereth the waters of the sea together as an heap: he layeth up the depth in storehouses. Let all the earth fear the Lord: let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him.”–Psalm 33:1-8
“I will bless the Lord at all times: his praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul shall make her boast in the Lord: the humble shall hear thereof, and be glad. O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together.”–Psalm 34:1-3
You are your own creator and build your own environment with every thought, word and deed. Love goes forth as creative substance, yet returns to you in different form because its vibration has traveled around the earth several times since it left you. The love you release returns in a more condensed state of substance and at a lower rate of vibration. Yet it is still radiant Light, for Light, as the life sparks, is the invisible atomic substance of the universe. Light is the carrier wave over which love travels at the speed of thought, faster than the speed of light. Extend your consciousness to the Source, hold your hands high and ask for Light to fill and purify you.
Most people just don’t use enough dynamic praise. To praise lifts the self, and clothes you with a cloak of glory. Then thank the Father for what you have. This you must do, for praise is the most common form of gratitude, even among men. Offer praise from a full heart. Praise God for the visible miracles and those that are still invisible. If you praise God, you will have no difficulty finding reasons to praise other people and situations. Praise everything, even a blister or a swelling. Declare that it consists of perfectly beautiful substance, but that Light must dissolve it to take on a higher form.
Speak to praise, not to condemn. Even a headache can be a crown of glory, if you declare it so. Say, “This is beautiful, wonderful. This is God’s own perfect headache, made of His perfect Light as substance and power.” As a creator god, you have misused power and substance in the past, and so have created what you do not like. Yet, you must be a master of life, a conqueror of soul, lifting the misused substance and creating perfection in its place.
“Ye are gods.”–John 10:34 and Psalm 82:6. You are a god, a creator god making, not a god in the making. You are now learning to make perfect creations. Your praise invokes a great power. “Never have I seen the seed of the righteous begging bread.”–Psalm 37:25. The Psalmist knew that Israel had and would release the power of praise by reciting the Psalms he wrote. Read Psalms 33 and 34, for unequaled praise. David, the author of most of the Psalms, erred in his youth, but paid his debts to the law later in life.
Always fill your heart with a song of praise. As you send forth praise, the love substance returns to you in such an expanded form that it actually creates an invisible container, which love then fills. You need plenty of space, mentally and physically, in which love may create. If you want a new car, for example, work with love substance, and use praise to extend the walls of your prayer workroom. Love returns to fill the room. Unless you praise enough, you might not have room to hold the love that returns to you.
People are often improvident with spiritual laws. Praise God that He has returned it to you, forming these objects of your desire, and that you may have them now. Love returns and condenses into near visibility in your prayer workroom. Finally, when you have praised enough, it becomes visible under the spoken Word.
The whole world is suffering acutely for lack of love. Praise expands the walls of your workroom, and turns the gears. Praise God that He has made life tough, because this builds your stamina, grit, and determination. A challenge that leaves you gasping will cause you to build that stamina of spirit that puts you over the top. It gives you the punch you need.
Spirit is immovable and untouchable, and it cannot ache. Only the body has sensation, and the mind must agree before it has even that. Be tolerant. Thank God for any pain you experience. Remember that praise and singing form true prayer. Praise and sing your prayers to manage pain.
How to Make Your Dreams Reality
Edna Lister transcript, January 25, 1933, Tacoma, WA, Clarissa A. Watkins, scribe.
Miracles do not always happen visibly in the objective world, but sometimes you experience them as a revelation, vision, or insight. To make your dream-desire a reality, you must go to the golden Silence—the eye of the hurricane—the storm center of quietness in the face of chaos. The golden Silence is your seat of power for creating perfection, so an intense desire to create perfection in your life is a definite need. Review your life, what you believe your goals to be, to discover what your chief desire really is. Conflicting desire weaken your will to succeed and cause your efforts to end in failure. Desire is the creator, so lift up your desires, purify them to make them universal.
To manifest in outer perfection, your desires must be unselfish. Therefore, desire the great Good, not for yourself alone, but for all mankind. You can ask for money, if you want to use it to give your fellow man better service. The desire to help anyone is the Spirit of God seeking expression through you. To succeed in life, your desire must be that God pours His abundance on those you wish to help, according to His will, His method, and His agent, when you ask Him to open your heart, mind and purpose.
An example of prayer to purify your desires: In this moment I, Name, am holding up my heart’s desires, the desires that God has planted and nurtured in me since the beginning, the great fundamental desires that push me forth, urge me on, those talents and capacities that I must express, God-given, God-urged. Here and now I lift them up to Thee that Thy Light may purify them of all selfishness. I would be selfless in my desires, that the Light of the power of love may pour forth on them, bringing them into all perfection. Here and now, let my desires be made universal. That which I ask for myself, I now ask for everyone. I am open-minded, willing to be led, willing to let Thy agent guide me. O Lord, please lift me and fill me with Thy abundance!
Praise God fervently, so that by the power of His marvelous, magnificent, glorious, irresistible love, all these things shall be added unto you
from the outside. Love is the conqueror, praise is the shortcut, and desire is the creator. Praise is the most marvelous shortcut of all. If you are up against it,
if you have an urgent need, you must conquer, not the necessity to manifest supply, health, or whatever you need, but to conquer that idea of any need aside from God! Let your attitude be, I must conquer self.
The subconscious mind is the seat of your emotional life. Your ideas of separation, lack, and limitation stand between you and your instantaneous miracle.
The only way to success in prayer is to fix your mind absolutely on perfection, recognizing only that which is perfect. You cannot succeed while you think that you must or can control any aspect of the situation. You can achieve only when you have the driving necessity from within to conquer the self that stands in the way. Only praise keeps your mind clear enough to achieve this success. Through steadfastly offering praise for ten minutes, you can overcome any blow, whatever it may be. Yet you must have a fervent, burning desire to do so. Desire is the God-given fundamental impulse to attain within each soul. You can lift your desire and Light will purify it.
The world is divided into four classes. Some are the Knowers, those born knowing who they are, what they want and where they are going, and with desire flaming, they achieve greatly. The other three classes are Hope, Wish, and Want. The Hoper is often of mournful countenance, sometimes joyous, usually sweet-natured. Yet playing the role of a Hoper is different from having hope itself or exercising it. The Wisher is a leaner, with little or no spine. He is cheerful and joyous, often smiling, the I wish I could do as you do
type. This attitude toward life will never create success. The Wanter is willful, selfish, greedy, and grasping. When selfishness rules desire, the soul wants and takes without earning. This is disastrous!
Purify your desire first, then say, Let my own good come to me, O Lord!
Then offer praise and love, and thank God that you already have it now—and it will come! Your purified praise, love and gratitude perfect your desire. Then the seed of God’s love is born within your love, splits the sheath of self-ness and bursts into bloom as you. Love substance goes forth, and it slows in vibration as it returns, into a heavier, though not less spiritual substance, condensed, but still Light. Praise constantly to condense love substance, for praise forms the mold and makes the container for your miracle.
Your desire must be eager and expectant, a burning, flaming enthusiasm. Desire awakens as a whirling fiery nucleus, like a sun center in your heart. As you praise and keep your torch of desire burning brightly, it increases in size and radiates as a revolving, scintillating mass of light. Yet remember, you cannot achieve complete success unless you desire to create perfection. The desire, which is a burning flame, must be there, to conquer or express. Your desire must be intensely, radiantly active.
A final caution—you may have been working on a problem earnestly, faithfully and untiringly. Perhaps you have seen the good fruits of your labor in the perfect healing of a dear one. Then you may hear someone else claim that he or she was the channel through whom the work was done. This is a test. It is nothing more than a trial. In such a case, thank God that He has accomplished the healing. Do not claim any part in it yourself or ask any recognition. If you silently relinquish the credit, then whatever your part in the healing may have been, you shall receive the full 100 percent of Light-as-Power added.
Psalms of Praise: Psalm 33, 34, 65, 68 145, 146, 15.
Imagination, the Kingly Faculty
Edna Lister transcript, January 26, 1933, Tacoma, WA, Clarissa A. Watkins, scribe.
When faced with discord, with conflict, just surrender to God and do not fight. To stand and love and to know God’s love surrounds you is all it takes. Just stand and smile but do nothing wrong no matter who may want you to—just stand in the power of love and know. There is never an excuse for backing down from your ideals. You can’t step down into the mud to lift another out of it. To maintain your resolve, think “God lives in this physical body as me.” Stand with God on your ideals, send forth the power of love, and know that God is irresistible, immovable and invincible.
Today we are lifting not only all of the outer physical things, but our own inner desires, for greater purification, and asking for greater capacity to send forth love. We know that we are one with all and with each other, and we have been raised into that high place of security and perfection. We now hold up all of those who have been placed in our care and keeping; we hold them in the Eternal Heart of the Father-Mother God, alive and completely whole. Here and now our work is complete and it shall manifest spiritually. Our minds are open to receive that revelation, our hearts are open to receive that inspiration, in Thy arms, O God, we rest, in Thy Heart we abide, eternally greater, devoted, eternally wise and eternally loving. We are ready and know the answer to our prayers shall be given. Amen.
Imagination is the act or faculty of forming a mental image of an object; an image in the mind; a formulated conception or idea.
–Century Dictionary) Imagination is the builder of forms, the kingly faculty.
how it will be
of your life. The trend of your life depends on these pictures in imagination, what your creations will look like, how successful your married life or business will be. If you build the right pictures of success and achievement, in the right way, you need not worry, you cannot fail to meet your goal. If you become discouraged and give up, voice the wail of the quitter, the faint-hearted, you will never succeed. You must accept and conquer sometime, so you might as well do it now!
God puts you where you are to conquer self, to express your inner ability, a talent that you have not yet expressed. God has put you where life has made things easy for you to conquer even if it seems too hard. Do not pity yourself, but build pictures of yourself conquering your worst selfish habits. To be a conqueror, you must without fail hold the thought that where you are is a privilege. God is sending you to school to learn how to conquer self completely and you must graduate to reach the goal.
Imagination may be your kingly faculty, but to wear a crown you must be able to direct and control this unruly mental faculty. Mind itself is a universal vibration of the Godhead, and therefore an essence. The essence of Mind permeates everything, passes through every obstacle, and over every distance. Mind’s vibration flows through your receiving set, your brain cells as thought, imagination and every other mental attribute. One man said that the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile,
Imagination, the kingly faculty,
Edmund Burke. The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke. London, John C. Nimmo, 1887.
To visualize is to make visual or visible that which is perceived by the mind only.
–Century Dictionary You can go wrong with visualization in only three ways: The negative thoughts you project, the negative emotions you feel, and the negative pictures you build in imagination. It takes a real soul conqueror to hold his peace, to control his self always. Check, at least once a day, to see what kind of pictures you are building, to pour love on what you have been dreaming or picturing to make your products of imagination more beautiful.
Every creator needs a workshop, an area devoted to giving his creative ideas form. The universe is God’s workshop, and yours is your mind. To praise God increases the size of your workshop. Desire sends the substance—whole, perfect and complete—into radiant activity on its way to physical form. Imagination builds a photographic negative, which it flashes against the inner sensorium of the brain, and from it builds a form in this invisible substance—a form as definite and perfect as you could build with a carpenter’s tools. You create the invisible form of the idea you desire to make manifest. Do not haphazardly intermix your imagination’s photographic negatives, pictures, or the substance you have used will mix indiscriminately or ooze away and be lost to you. You create and you destroy; God does not do it. So you must have a strong, stable form that will hold substance as you keep filling the form to completion.
Desire is an emotional feeling, an appetite, an aspiration, a passion, but greatest of all, desire impels you to action, as in speaking the Word that condenses substance into form. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
–Genesis 1:3. You can ask for yourself, but if you color your asking with discordant emotions, you will get nowhere. In other words, you cannot ask correctly while you are still full of a contradictory mess of self. You cannot ask amiss if you are asking from your soul, but not from the emotions or from the false intellect of the solar plexus. When you no longer have fear or doubt in your heart, are no longer able to think a negative thought, you will not need to bother about purifying your imagination. Yet until you perfect your imagination, you must monitor the pictures you let it create.
At night, just before falling sleep, assemble a photographic image for each of your main desires. Flash these images against the inner sensorium of your brain, to make absolutely certain that they are as perfect as you want them to be. For example, see a picture of work piled up to accomplish. Then see the cash register overflowing with money, the outer returns of your efforts. Do not go to sleep seeing it empty. As your last conscious act, see everything as perfect—purse, wallet, bank account or cash drawer. If someone owes you money, see his wallet overflowing with money, and more prosperity than he can handle because what you give to him in thought, will return to you.
You can create forms of the things you want or suffer the effects of what you do not want. What you give the most time and attention to making is what will return to you. See a perfect picture of what you desire, but always give the substance of the thing to the other fellow, see someone else having it. He may not want it, but that doesn’t matter. Make your idea universal. If you want a car, say, Let everyone in the whole world have the car he or she desires.
If someone wants to give you something, always accept, no matter what it is. Never turn anything down! Say, If you want to give it to me, yes.
Still, you must give away the mental images of what you really need.
Again, let me emphasize: Be sure that the blueprint of your desire is perfect, not the pattern of what you have been idly thinking all day, the thing you do not want. The blueprint you draw will reflect itself out here in the world. Harness your imagination and get it to working for you. Erase any wrong pictures you have built; otherwise, the subconscious mind, which acts like an alarm clock set for the wrong hour, will go right on reproducing them. Raise your hands and send the power of love to lift them, then praise God that the substance is returning to you. Praise Him for everything you have and have not, to increase the size of your workshop, and bring your desires into form more rapidly.
Keep your desire perfect, complete and glowing. Have the burning desire to do the thing you are doing perfectly. Then harness and control the imagination, the architect, the construction engineer, to build what you do want. Picture the Master on the Mount of Transfiguration. Put your hand in his and send love along all your lines of Light and responsibility. Now lift, lift, lift! your difficulty, whatever or whoever it is. Know absolute perfection, that your eyes and ears will be opened, imagination will be harnessed from now on, working constructively, pillars of fire around all your molds, protecting them.
Immeasurable Power to use for success lies in that soul who becomes enthralled, possessed by the idea of surrender to Power, to complete absorption, complete surrender to the Power of the One God, one with all. I can be what I truly am. I can release Power substance. I can nurture this God-given desire until it is ready to express,
Creating Your Own Success and Wealth
Edna Lister transcript, January 27, 1933, Tacoma, WA, Clarissa A. Watkins, scribe.
Declare with me, “This is God’s perfect hour for me.” You can live your whole life like this if you live only one hour at a time. Remember, “Lord, don’t let me miss any opportunity today.” Also, think to yourself, “I’m a wealth magnet!”
Let us now hold up everyone on our lines of light and responsibility. See them at the heart of a perfect radiant sun center of Light. In this you may abide and rest. Open your mind to receive inspiration and revelation, and your heart to be filled with love and understanding. You are ready to receive the answer to your prayer, the solution to your problem. You are opening your eyes to see that open door to service which belongs to you, your place to fill full of love. You have opened your eyes to see, your ears to hear, and soon you shall receive in great measure, pressed down and running over with twelve baskets to share with the world.
The answer as to how to create your success and your wealth lies in the five points I shall present; however, your results will depend on your ability to separate yourself from the idea of time, knowing that it is always NOW. If you live now, as if God were walking with you, you shall walk in absolute perfection. You shall have no need to worry about the future, for it will unfold. People make five mistakes in manifesting the visible from the invisible. The greatest thing to know is that God will provide for you if you serve Him. If you see perfection everywhere, only the perfectly good can return to you. If you look at imperfection, it will return to you in your life of relationships with family and affairs. Five steps are necessary in actually creating, or in manifesting form from the invisible reality.
Will is a God-given mental faculty, which you use as will-power. The first step in manifesting form is concentration, the purely mental effort you make to focus your will-power to attain your goal. However, you can concentrate on only one thing at a time, so when you concentrate on manifesting supply, you cannot be doing anything else. Raise your hands to surrender to God’s Light-as-Power, send forth love, and speak the Word, which sends the Power directly to where it is needed—it will go to wherever you name. I concentrate on only one thing—my surrender to the Light as God’s instrument. As I speak the Word to release that Power, I know that “the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.”—John 14:10. Not I, but the Father sends forth the Light-as-Power and it does the work.
In doing this, you are filled with a flaming glory, with the power of love, surrounded wi th a pillar of fiery glory, radiating light. The Light as the power of love goes forth in all your affairs—the rent is paid, debts are paid, you can pay everyone you owe. This opens the doors to every avenue of income. If you want wealth and success, you must take others with you, the people who owe you and those who are in need. You must lift all people and be universal in your treatments for them if you are to succeed.
Declare, “The spirit of the Lord goeth before me making clear and easy the way.” Those whom you lift will be inspired, filled with ideas of abundance, and become so successful that they want to pay out money. You have to climb above the emotional and mental need to send out love. It takes concentration to keep your eye on sending the Light forth, and not on your conditions. So concentrate continuously on one thing, and if you concentrate on surrender to the Light, your eye will be single and your whole body filled with light. The single-eye approach to releasing Light fulfills the law of love instantly.
Regarding visualization, Christian Larson asked me, “What are you seeing? Don’t be so satisfied about giving away your last cent. If you see an empty, yawning cavity in a wallet or purse, and give the emptiness away, you’ll always have an empty purse, because you can never have anything you don’t see.” Now picture a handful of $50 bills in your wallet—see your wallet or purse full of them! Use your imagination to visualize them where they may not be now but will be. To make visualization work best, picture images on a large scale, like the barrel of meal that wasted not, and the cruse of oil that never failed or diminished.
See all your own wallets and purses full first, then fill everyone else’s pockets with invisible bills. By giving these bills away you draw them from the invisible to the visible and thus, you increase your own abundance. Always give to others that which you really want to have come to you! At night, visualize putting this money into someone else’s hand or pocket. Fill his pockets full to overflowing with $50 bills. Don’t ask God for money, but thank God that you already have it! Anyone will have sufficient supply, if he will live according to the law of giving to bring it to pass.
You can make every penny, nickle, every dollar you handle pay you dividends if, when you pay it out, you say to yourself, “Thank God I have this $25 to give,” then see yourself giving $50, because you will receive the returns on what you see. If you give graciously and gladly, and double the amount, you’ll receive dividends on what you see yourself paying. When you receive bills to be paid, say, “Thank God for this sign that I shall have ample money!” You are lending money with every bill you pay and it will return to you a thousandfold. Always declare that you will receive double or triple what you need, thereby giving yourself a prosperity treatment every time you pay out money, be it ever so small an amount. Make everything pay you dividends.
You are lending money with every bill you pay and it will return to you a thousandfold. Always declare that you will receive twice as much as you need, thereby giving yourself a prosperity treatment. Make it a prosperity treatment every time you pay out money, be it ever so small an amount. Make everything pay you dividends.
You must rise to the point where you are not afraid to accept money. Do not be indifferent about money, but enthusiastic. The only folks who have someone else paying their way can say, “I’m absolutely indifferent to money, I don’t need it,” because somebody is providing it! It’s just as wrong to over-emphasize money as it is to under-emphasize it—a middle course is best, where you accept it at its right valuation and in the right place. Wealth is not just money but is the abundance of the universe and takes its rightful place if you neither over- nor underestimate its importance. You cannot escape the need for money in this world. You have to use the coin of the realm, but not over-emphasize money.
When I was younger, I felt that perhaps God couldn’t trust me with very much money. When praying, after asking for money, I said, "Now Father, don’t, don’t let me have it if You think it isn’t the right thing for me.” Yes, young people are silly! I should have said, “God of all that is, fill me with the courage to succeed, the steadfastness to stand, the vision to hold myself to these laws of life. Help me to keep my eyes single upon the truth and pour out the wealth of the universe to me. Let my eyes stay open and let Your abundance pass through my hands freely because nothing of the world can hold me back from success!” Universal substance is always available to draw upon for your needs. This universal substance includes other things besides money—well-being, health, and shelter as well. No man can touch even a fraction of a vibration that belongs to another—it can’t be done.
God gave you a certain amount of substance, named and numbered with your soul’s identification number, to bring into manifestation, an account to draw on, to create with, but you have to bring it from the invisible into outer forms. You have not yet begun to draw on your supply. Countersign the blank check on the invisible substance in your God-supplied account; use the ink of the magnetic currents of the earth that cause things to move. Praise God and make an added effort to put these truths to the test.
Surrender absolutely to the power of love, tend and watch as it goes forth and does the work for you when you let it. Then speak the Word to send it to whatever imbalance needs correcting, and the Light, as the power of love, will do the work. Just focus on the idea of surrender to this power of the invisible substance of love, and declare, “Please, O Lord, release this power of love through me.” Then get busy and release more and more love, praise God, and the invincible law of Almighty God will do the work.
It’s impossible to help people by using mental commands, because doing so is forcing your will and desire on them, and will cause a reaction. You must work from the realm of spirit in prayer and speaking the Word, and do most of your prayer silently, even with children. Praise a recalcitrant child to his face for the good qualities he does exhibit. Raise your hands, see a circle of fire about him, and say, “Name, you’re filled with the power of love. You’re perfect, whole and complete, doing the will of God, filled with this wholeness, completeness, perfection.” Then ask God to melt their block of ice. How long it takes depends on how much love you pour out upon the situation.
(The question was asked: If I have to pay out $50 at a given time but no one owes me anything and I have no known way of having it on hand, what shall I do?) Answer: Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity. Keep on working with these laws and you will reach the place where your only question will be, “How is God going to open the door?” Declare, “I am working in the Light of God, and I am shod with the Light of God as I walk earth today. I thank Thee, Father, that I already have everything I need through the grace of Thy glory. Let it become visible now,” and according to your faith, so shall it be done to you.
Praise God twenty-four hours a day, praising Him that you already have what you need, are letting it become visible, and you’ll be freed from need. “I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight: I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron: and I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places.”–Isaiah 45:2-3.
The Spoken Word
Edna Lister transcript, January 27, 1933, Tacoma, WA, Clarissa A. Watkins, scribe.
God is constantly broadcasting His message of love and our task to to be tuning in constantly to hear Him. You may hear with your ears, but you must listen with your brain cells to understand the message in the spoken Word. These teachings cause the soul to awaken new brain cells by rupturing the illusions of appearance the world has cast on your mind’s use of your physical brain cells. Only then can they flower so that your mind can use them to contact the mind that was in Christ Jesus.
Love is the highway to God, and the conqueror of self. Praise is the shortcut for all miracles. To praise while in prayer without ceasing is most necessary, so desire, the creator, must be kept stirred into a state of expectation. Imagination, the builder of forms, relies on the spoken Word to bring your ideas into form. The spoken Word crystallizes substance into outer form, but does not stop its activity.
The whole universe whirls in simultaneous outer-centrifugal to inner-centripetal motion, which forms the cogs of force
that mesh the gears of Creation. These forces form the universal mechanisms that hold solar systems, galaxies and star clusters in their paths, in relationship with one another and with the center, which is God. By our spoken Word we use the same energies that maintain our Milky Way to whirl substance into form—by agitation, rotation and condensation, we consolidate Light into the form of what we desire.
To manifest a creation, we must love mightily—we must give the equivalent, in love, of the thing we want. To maintain the balance between inner and outer, we must release the invisible Light of love-as-substance equivalent to our desired physical mass. Yet we may not greedily grasp or force our will, for this unbalances the world. At this point, being conscious of what we are doing, we must maintain careful watch over our spoken Word, “For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.”-Matthew 12:37.
“To him that overcometh will I give…a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.”-Revelation 2:17. You are given a new name for overcoming self during certain periods of initiation. Also, “Him that overcometh will I…write upon him my new name.”-Revelation 3:12. You can receive these names bestowed by God only by accepting, assuming and fulfilling responsibility for conquering self and soul ascension.
The only way to completely establish the Word of your desire is to offer a universal reason for needing to do so; a personal reason is not enough. The Power alone will not work according to your will and desire unless you assume responsibility for its action and form. When you do, you act as a creator with God and you can release unlimited Light as Power. When you become as responsible as our Master was, you discover that you cannot find enough people, situations or circumstances to lift and pour Light upon.
By lifting ever greater loads of responsibility, you earn your new name and the authority to direct the Light as Power to do the greater works that Jesus did. Many of the Elect and certain teachers have earned the authority of the name, and in their joy at receiving it have used it constantly, thinking it was forever theirs to use as they pleased. However, Light as Power may be used only under direct command, and only after the soul has earned the right to, and can, control all the Power the name releases. God created you for His Light as Power to use, not the Power of the Light for you to use!
Every test comes in sets of three, purity of heart, mind and purpose, for example. You must maintain perfect integrity, have selfless love, and loyalty to principle. You must harness your will and desire to a universal reason for action, ask what you desire for other people also, and then thank God that He has already given it to you. Thus, you will never get trapped by selfishness. Every word you utter creates something after its kind, reacts, and returns to you, increased and magnified. Your every word adds to itself every similar vibration as it circles the earth, returns to you. If your words are idle or curses, they await the perfect moment to return to you as a dark cloud! You get back everything, every last bit of what you’ve sent forth, the good or the not good. You must then lift it and change it back into love. You must take and fulfill the responsibility for what you create.
If a “dweller on the threshold” is waiting there for you, lift it into Light instantly. Right now you can pour forth enough love in this very moment to neutralize it. Do not scold and berate a refractory child, but say something like, “You are a wonderful child! You are armored in love, and nothing inimical can come near or happen to you!” If your daughter is going with a youth to whom you object for good and sufficient reasons, do not be arbitrary about him or forbid her seeing him; instead, use an approach like this: “Since you are going with this boy, you must see something good in him, or you wouldn’t love him, because sometimes the ones who do wrong are the most lovable ones.”
If your son is keeping bad company, take a similar approach with him. He loves the lovableness of these undesirable ones, he gets something of love from them that he doesn’t get at home. Perhaps he is satisfying the desire to have someone appreciate him. Pour out enough appreciation for what your son does, perhaps more than you think he deserves. Declare him and his friend perfect, whole and complete, and ask him to help you lift his friend higher! Say: “I am so glad you are lending light to the darkness that plagues him. We’ll lift him up to a cloud continent of Light, and form a pillar of fire around him (or them, as the case may be) for protection that will make him perfect, too.” Tell your son how the Word goes forth and multiplies, so he should watch his idle words, also. Keep on lifting, keep on pouring out love, and use no more slang than you can help.
“I am, I can, I will, I do”: These words have their time and place, but avoid “I will,” which explodes and scatters the good in what you are working to achieve. Say, “I can do it,” or, “I know I can do it”—but “I shall do it now” is best. Encourage the hoper and wisher to say, “I shall do my best,” for “I’ll try” is the subconscious mind’s pet phrase, a little sophistry of self meaning “I really don’t want to do it at all!”
We are always living in the Eternal Now and there is no future or past in manifesting a desire. You want the real thing now! The root and branch of a failure in manifesting a creation is the idea, the thought that maybe God doesn’t want you to have it now. Instead you should realize that you now have it in the invisible! Declare, “Let it become visible. This is God’s perfect hour of fulfillment for me, this is God’s perfect will for me. This is God’s perfect time to have love come forth through me. Now is the perfect time for all of God’s good added things to come to me.”
“Now” is one of the greatest ideas you can grasp. Now is the only time you need to recognize as essential if you are always ready to speak the Word that will bring the invisible desire into visible form. Say, “I am perfect, whole and complete in Spirit, now. I am now expressing all of this good.” There is no time, no space, no limit, no letting go when you live in the now. You are protected so long as the desire is unselfish.
Remain impersonal, unselfish, willing and open to be used, give to others what you desire, keep lifting—lift and lift and lift all you can! Even if you are dead wrong about the timing but are holding the desire up for love to be poured out upon it, it will come to you in the right time, in the right way, and the law itself will protect you. Ask to be purged of selfishness, then “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”-Matthew 6:33.
Your final declaration is, “Let it come forth”, let it become visible. Let it be made flesh and blood. Let this perfection manifest. Scripture often says, “and it shall come to pass” later followed by “and it came to pass”—these phrases are the two halves of a miracle-Word, its declaration and the fulfillment.
Check yourself instantly for using idle words. Ask forgiveness and that they be made into Light. Every night as yourself: Have I poured out enough love today? Have I praised God enough? Has my desire kept itself burning today? Have my pictures been perfect today? Have my spoken words been perfect and what I want? If you cannot say “yes,” you must pour forth more love, send forth more praise, hold your hands up until you are enfolded into the Light, until your desire burns, until you see everything as perfect—then declare, “Let this perfection manifest.”
Since perfect practice brings perfection, practice, practice, practice, practice! It gives you the ability to have strong days when you do pour forth enough love, and your spoken Word will come to pass—it cannot help but do so. Now breathe! realizing that you are breathing the Breath of God!
Eternal Youth: Practical Posture
Edna Lister transcript, January 27, 1933, Tacoma, WA, Clarissa A. Watkins, scribe.
The whole universe operates under the principle of equilibrium. Everything has its own point of perfect balance, including our Earth. We live on a sphere with an iron core, which makes it a gigantic magnet, and we know our planet has a north and south pole, which we call “true north” and “true south,” where the lines of longitude all meet: imagine a schoolroom globe of earth, rotating on its tilted axis. Over vast ages in time, the magnetic north drifted from its original position to its present location.
You have several sets of muscles: thoracic, abdominal, head and neck, arms, legs. If your posture is out of alignment, it puts everything out of place internally. Keep the spine straight, head back, chin level with the floor, shoulders back, abdominal muscles pulled in (loins girded) knees straight when standing—these are your needs for correct posture. No one should have a prominent abdomen, so pull in the abdominal muscles, which is especially needed by those with colitis; exercise, especially by walking, is also essential. Light is substance, lowering it makes the substance into coarser particles and you eventually get to the ice stage. If you stand straight, everything will adjust itself. Good posture is the most definite reason and necessity for physical and mental balance. Wrong posture will contract your consciousness and diminish your ability to register ideas in mind.
The Seven Degrees of Breath and Breathing 1
Edna Lister outline, January 31, 1933, Tacoma, WA
You inhale seven degrees of breath in one deep breath. You must surrender and open your being to God to attain the higher degrees of breath.
The first degree of breath is a molecular respiration that occurs within the second grade of substance. It is an automatic breath.
The second degree of breath is a universal pulsing of all the cells. You build mental pictures of imagination in this grade of substance. The first pollution or unlikeness to God occurs here through sensation, where evil may first enter through the appetitive soul.
The third degree of breath fashions substance into form. This third grade of substance allows the process of thinking. You think in symbols of pictures flashed on the inner sensorium of the brain, then translate the images into words.
The fourth degree of breath is the respiratory rate of balance between the lower and higher degrees of breath. This breath is causative in action, functioning positively and actively in the lower three degrees of breath, but negatively and passively in the higher three degrees of breath.
The fifth degree of breath is the first of the purely spiritual breaths, which you breathe through the crown, not through the lungs. You breathe this breath from the crown straight into the solar plexus. You must raise your own rate of vibration to spiritual balance in the Light before you breathe the fifth, sixth and seventh degrees of breath. The pure fifth degree of breath is fiery ozone, which would char the lungs if inhaled in its unmodified state. People invoke the fifth degree breath in revivals, trances, ecstatic dancing, rhythmic chanting and voodoo; its effects can result in insanity.
You are able to think abstractly on the sixth degree of breath. On this degree of breath you can unify your will and desire to become one with God. When you speak from this degree, your spoken Word releases enough Light-as-Power to create miracles instantly.
You cannot take any unlikeness with you to God into the sixth or seventh degrees of breath without unleashing terrible and potentially destructive resistance. To approach these degrees, always breathe deeply and say, “As oil mingles with oil, as water mingles with water, as air mingles with air, as light mingles with Light, so does my life mingle with the Life of God.” Thus, you lift every selfish and willful desire to a cloud continent of Light to be purified, they become one with God and the Light absorbs them. Then your desire and breath become one and your spoken Word goes forth and stands.
The seventh degree of breath is the great degree of the All. When walking the Christed way, breathing deeply and declaring yourself to be a radiant Spirit of Light, the seventh degree of breath flows through cells of your body and lifts you ever higher. All healing comes through the absolute balance of the three higher degrees of breath. Yet, unless you obey the physical, mental and spiritual laws, you cannot bring healing to pass, or progress in ascension.
For example, Jesus was a man who raised the vibration of his body until he was no longer simply the man, but was an incarnation of the Logos, the descent of the Holy Spirit as the Holy Breath. His Word healed, yet the receiver of the healing must ascend in consciousness to hold, to retain the healing.
The Seven Degrees of Breath and Breathing 2
Edna Lister transcript, January 31, 1933, Tacoma, WA, Clarissa A. Watkins, scribe.
The “air” you breathe begins as pure Light (as do all things in universal manifestation). To inhale all seven degrees of breath in one deep breath, you must consciously open your being and surrender to God’s Light as you breathe. Only in this way can you open yourself to receive the three higher degrees of breath. {The air you breathe is 21% oxygen, 78% nitrogen, .09% argon, and trace amounts of carbon dioxide, neon, hydrogen, and methane.} You exhale 16% of the oxygen you inhale on a deep breath! So breathing deeply is essential and aids your consciousness, mental perception, and discernment.
1. The first degree of breath is the ordinary automatic rhythmic act produced by networks of neurons in the brain’s pons and medulla. This automatic breath is a molecular form of “respiration” that occurs within the second grade of purely physical Light-as-substance. The first degree of breath empowers physical life, but the second and third degrees of breath are mental in their nature and effects.
2. The second degree of breath is the universal pulsing of all atoms within all kinds of various cells. {This “pulsing” accords with varying rates of vibration within the electromagnetic spectrum, specific to the differing kinds of atoms and cells.} You build your mental pictures of imagination in this degree of substance. Any emotional-mental pollution or unlikeness to God’s vision occurs here, so imagination is where evil may first exert an influence.
3. The third degree of breath enables the soul to fashion Light-as-substance into form. This third grade of substance also enables the process of thinking, which begins as symbols or mental pictures flashed on the inner sensorium of the brain and then translated into mental speech. {The sensorium is “the part of the brain that receives and coordinates all the stimuli conveyed to various sensory centers; consciousness; a generic term for the intellectual and cognitive functions.”}
4. The fourth degree of breath is called the respiratory rate of balance between the three lower and three higher breaths. Think of this as the causal link in which one thing causes another; in this case it forms the midpoint balance between the physical and spiritual dimensions. So the fourth degree of breath forms the balance between the positively charged lower three degrees of breath (which affect the physical body, the emotions, and the mental life) and the negatively charged higher three degrees of breath, the fifth, sixth, and seventh, all of which are purely spiritual.
5. The fifth degree of breath is the first of the three spiritual degrees of breath, which you breathe simultaneously with the physical breaths, not through your nose, mouth or lungs, but through the crown of your head. The fifth degree of breath is the first breath you inhale that reaches down to the solar plexus, which increases self-centered “will.”. When modified to purity, the fifth degree of breath increases the sixth and seventh degrees of breath until they become like ozone,—so fiery that it would char the lungs if inhaled undiluted without sufficient training and preparation.
Most people are so weak in theirability to focus their will and desire on a single objective that they cannot and do not reach the fifth breath, although they may briefly touch it (in revivals, for example, where many people begin breathing at the same rate, raising the overall vibration much higher through their excitement). The other way they may experience the fifth breath is by entering a trance state, usually (but not always) involuntary, as they near puberty, a time when they “daydream” their souls partially out-of-body. Parents who recognize this “floating” state in their children do them a favor by using their name to recall them to full consciousness by saying, “John, get back into your body!”
6. The sixth degree of breath enables you, as the soul you really are, to think abstractly, while you apply logic, reason, discernment, discrimination, and discretion. When your will and desire become one with God’s will and desire for you, your breath powers your spoken Word to create miracles instantly. However, you may not take a single unlikeness to God into the sixth or seventh degrees of breath, for such taints cannot pass through the sixth degree of breath without unleashing a deadly physical resistance.
To purify your motivation and volition as you breathe deeply, on the exhale, say, “As oil mingles with oil, as water mingles with water, as air mingles with air, as light mingles with Light, so does my life mingle with the Life of God.” Thus, you can lift every selfish, willful desire to be purified, to become one with God’s desire for you. When your desire and breath become one, your spoken Word goes forth and stands as you have declared it.
7. The seventh degree of breath is the great degree of the All. When walking the Via Christa—breathing deeply and declaring yourself to be a radiant Spirit of Light—the Light flows through your life sparks, atoms, molecules and cells and lifts you even higher in perception, discernment, and consciousness.
The absolute balance of the three higher degrees of breath is the healer: Unless you obey the laws that govern your physical, mental and spiritual phases of life, you cannot bring healing to pass, or go forward and upward in ascension. For example, Jesus raised the vibration of his body until he was no longer simply a man, but was an incarnation of the Logos, the descent of the Holy Spirit as the Holy Breath in man.
Holding your inhaled breath is an easy and effective way of improving your lung capacity. Begin by sitting straight in a comfortable chair, holding your breath as you count as high as you can comfortably. Then slowly increase the length of time you can hold your breath and your exhalations. A count of thirty is considered the optimal number.
Solar plexus breathing opens the higher creative centers in the brain and pulls the higher breaths into and through the head. To do this stand tall, inhale, then hold the abdominal muscles in (clench them) as you exhale, dropping the solar plexus against your still clenched abdomen, and inhaling again. This is both law and the pattern of dynamic breathing, opening your desire body vital centers and your atomic body lotus centers. Controlling your breath is more conducive to serenity of spirit than anything else, so learn to harness and control your breathing.
The Secrets of Success
Edna Lister transcript, January 31, 1933, Tacoma, WA, Clarissa A. Watkins, scribe.
The secrets of success lie in the soul’s joyousness and sweetness of disposition. No one can stand between you and your own abundant good, limit you, or keep you from expressing if you will smile your way through the world’s criticism and jealousy. The value of a smile lies in its joyousness and obvious expectancy of the good. Form the habit of smiling joyously. As you work toward serenity of spirit, put on a smile to represent this joyous tranquility within. When people react to the smile, react again with an even bigger smile. Ask for greater illumination, a greater capacity to smile.
The secret of success lies within you, the ability to stand and accept whatever comes into your life as your own creation. Look neither to the right nor to the left, or into the face of your family or friend to discover where it originated. Accept it as your own personal responsibility, and your acceptance will determine your success. Every word you speak judges you. With every thought you hold, you create something. The emotions you are sending forth create for you. What are you sending forth? You are responsible for your own life.
Success consists in the ability to push a little harder, think a little faster and smile a lot more than the rest of the world. Failure consists in the ability to find a corner to sit and think it over, to lie down and cry when trials beset you. Success includes standing alone, never whining, crying or asking favors, but gently pressing, loving, and praising. That gives you the ability to press harder, think faster and smile more, lift up, and continue lifting. If you press harder, think faster and smile more than the world, nothing can hold you down.
What are my thoughts about my financial condition? Are they good? What are my declarations about it? Are they good? If you cannot say, “This is good,” you have no inner conviction that it is enough. You must keep on declaring that it is still good. Declare, “The only thing I want in this life is my very own good.” Lay everything, your desires and financial troubles, on the altar, and you will find the solution is there. Just know the truth and stand. Know the truth and the unjust will fall.
You may be delaying your own good by being unwilling to do something. You say it is mine, my money, etc., because you want to do it your way. Yet the keynote of prosperity is “willingness,” willingness to have it God’s way, not willfulness, but willingness. Bring in everything and everyone you want to lift, hold it all up and know the truth. In truth, you are holding up every person, all God’s agents, all situations, circumstances and conditions of your life, the lives of your dear ones, and those who have broad interests and broader responsibility. You are holding up the world, and you become a waiter in service.
You have opened yourself to release more selfless love and are willing to be lifted. You are willing to lift humanity and to serve God. You are willing to go wherever He sends you. You are willing to accept your position of service for God, to have health poured into you and on the world through you, to allow your families freedom of thought, never to disagree in words, but to pour out love, to be guided, sustained and protected by God. You are willing to have abundance poured on you, to have your mind filled with inspiration and illumination, and you are ready to receive in this instant, in this attitude of acceptance, this eager expectancy. Your own shall be added to you. It is so, and it shall manifest!
If you are living by the law and pouring out enough love, no one can really take advantage of you. Pour out love twenty-four hours a day to melt their hardness of heart. The love you pour forth is our protection, not the love you demand, but the love you give. The love you pour out prospers you. No one can take your coat,
but you must be willing to let them have it. You must be willing to do anything God asks of you, to pour forth enough love, so you will not have to strip yourself. In this inner kingdom of love, you cannot lose your own good. The obstacles you meet are just opportunities to unfold and grow. The power of love holds you steadfast. Nothing can disturb or touch you. Strength and confidence fill you with the ability to achieve. You are inspired to lift your family.
The Secrets of Success
Edna Lister transcript, February 1, 1933, Tacoma, WA, Clarissa A. Watkins, scribe.
God is your banker, and holds your treasure in perfect safety and accounting. When you eliminate the earthy limitations you permit to hem you in, you will see why you were unable to manifest abundance. If anything in your life has grieved you, pour out love, which is the fire that consumes. Pour love on it all to cleanse every old emotion, negative thought and picture that has gone forth and built a form in your subconscious mind. Open the closed doors of the past. You cannot close the door, repress or ignore them to get rid of subconscious thought forms. If you still picture someone doing something to you, you still have a closed door that you must open. You have an affinity for anything that annoys you, and you must clear it out.
Do not use laws mentally—use spirit. Love will do it. Love makes the law perfect. If you are unable to pour out enough love to neutralize the situation, you will fail. So you must increase your capacity to love, devotion to service, and lose the Power to behold evil. Then you will look at the other fellow, know that you are responsible for him, pour out love on him, and help him to become perfect. Open the door farther back into the past and pour love back over that line and make it perfect.
The release of Light as the power of love is the secret of success. If you are going after it in the Light, to be an agent of the Almighty, to put the golden Christed Age in operation, you must ask for success for others also. Ask to be a purified instrument, so that you may release enough Power to uphold everyone you see and contact. The Power goes forth through you and will return to you, but you must send it forth for a universal reason. Everyone, anyone, anywhere, can lift the world. If you build universal pictures, you can release the world. Part of the time you do not shine, which is why you do not get what you desire. Leave a cloud of love every place you go, even if only walking through a store. Spray everyone with love, and it lifts people.
Be drawn into the heart of this Power, higher and ever higher into the heart of the fire, for only in the heart of the fire can you stand steadfast, and be worth what you desire to be worth in God’s service. Name, the power of love, which melts and opens doors and brings to pass, which creates divine activity, and sends forth divine abundance, goes forth from you this moment into all your affairs. Your body is filled with Light, you are whole and complete, and this shall be manifest in your heart, your mind, your body and affairs. Amen.
The one Substance, Power and Mind are all that the Father hath,
and flows as a stream, the River of Life. Use money like free flowing Power. Any holding onto its power is withholding from God.
The Secrets of Success
Edna Lister transcript, February 2, 1933, Tacoma, WA, Clarissa A. Watkins, scribe.
To get ahead and have successful results, you must hold up your desires every night and morning, to have them purified, cleansed and made perfect. Poverty is a disease. To be cured of any disease, the patient must be relieved of the idea behind the manifestation. Once you cure a person of the idea of poverty, it works out into the outer form as perfection. You must cure yourself of the idea. The instant you cure the idea, your financial health slips into place.
The first time you speak the Word, the work is done, abundance has gone forth and prosperity is established. It is finished on the inner. Renounce the old ideas of past lacks and wants. After you have lifted the ideas, and they no more enter, keep your eyes fixed on the perfect, by the most strenuous effort. You could add health, abundance, love, social life, success in business, and all shall come in proportion to the effort you put forth, Yet you must obey the fundamental laws. Love is the conqueror, love is irresistible, is invincible, and is complete. Send this love out on the wings of joy, twenty-four hours a day.
Your heart must house a garden of praise, a paean of thanksgiving backed by praise twenty-four hours a day, just “because.” Joyous praise is the shortcut to all manifestation. If you need it in a hurry, pour forth enough praise and it will come quickly. Love determines the amount, praise determines the time elapsed, and you must use both to be complete. Praise cuts down the time until things happen right now.
Desire is a creative flame. You must desire to express more of God, and you must always keep your flame burning eagerly, to fill the form and increase what is there. The imagination determines the form the demonstration will take. Sometimes it is not perfect, if your pictures are not perfect, square, and complete. You are responsible for your own life. Every word you speak judges you. You create something with every thought you hold. The emotions you send forth create for you. What are you sending forth?
The secret of success lies within you, and that secret is the ability to stand, despite what enters your life, to accept it as your own creation, to look neither to the right, the left, nor to your family or friend to see where it originated. You take everything that comes as your own personal responsibility, and that attitude will determine your success. Success consists in the ability to push a little harder, think a little faster, and smile a lot more than the rest of the world. Failure consists in the ability to run, find a corner to sit and think it over, to lie down and cry when blows hit you.
Success consists in standing alone, never whining, never crying, never asking favors, but pressing, loving and praising, which makes you able to push harder, think faster, smile more, lift, and keep on lifting. If you do this, nothing can hold you down. “Commit thy way unto the Lord. Trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass.”–Psalm 37:5.
Truth as Power
Edna Lister outline, February 9, 1933, San Francisco, CA; Acts 1:1-14, Acts 2:1-4.
The narrative of the forty days from Jesus’ Resurrection to Ascension Day is filled with stories that hold infallible proofs about the Baptism by Water and the Holy Spirit.
And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power. But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.–Acts 1:7-8. “It is not for you to know.” The human conception of the kingdom is earthly and worldly, not accurately depicting the spiritual kingdom of heaven. After Jesus' Ascension, two men, who were really angels, told the disciples, who had witnessed the Ascension, that he would come again in a like manner, in the same way.
Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.–Acts 1:11. How can this be? When you cleanse your heart, you make room to receive the Holy Spirit. Yet to do so, you must be in one place and of “one accord.” You must gather in all your scattered parts.
When the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.–Acts 2:1-4.
The Apostles were filled with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit sometimes arrives in a storm, it may descend in the sunshine of a clear day, but always it brings cloven tongues of Power, visible to the soul's sight. Have done with waiting. Speak the Word, “Let,” and release the Power.
A Prospering Consciousness
Edna Lister transcript, December 2, 1933, Buffalo, New York, Ruth Bender, scribe.
If you exalt a thing and declare it perfect, it will appear so and bring others to think the same about it. You can apply this to yourself, to your house, or to property you desire to sell. God is the fullness of spiritual substance that fills everything and everyone. God is perfect, therefore any adjustment that needs to be made is within you. Don’t pray with demands—“God, do what I want. God, give me what I want”—but pray, “God, please help me to make myself what I need to be, to put my very best into life.” You must exalt the self into Light until the self becomes one with God.
All motive power comes through your soul but you must act by directing and commanding the self. The more consciously you act, the more divine inspiration becomes available to you. Always put your best effort into what you do. You must share the good, but you must first get the good to pass it on. Keep the channel from God to you, and from you to your fellow man open. Do not think or say, “I’m putting more into this job than it’s worth.” The only way to get a better job is to pour more love into the job you already have. If you really put your best into life, God will send heavenly talent scouts to promote you.
Do your very best in whatever you do and the great laws of life will compensate you accordingly. When you pour out inspiration, life and love, God’s talent scouts will be there to sign you on. Declare, “I give the best in me for the world, and the world gives its best to me.” You must feel that all the beauty of the world belongs to you; possess it and enjoy it even if you don’t really have it continually. If you do your very best, God does the rest. Attune yourself to the very finest and best. Do not postpone the good in your consciousness.
Don’t say, “When my ship comes in” {or “When I win the lottery”} for by doing so, you equate your personal prosperity with material wealth and conditions only. If you tie your chance at success to the rise and fall of the world’s economic tides, then the very fact that you rise dictates that you must later fall again! You must believe that a sustained prosperity is possible. In knowing these things, you must partake of the mind that was in Christ Jesus. God is just as rich today and as ready to help you as ever. Christ would not have allowed his faith to be affected by an economic depression. So work every day to be perfectly aware that your prosperity is evident and always comes to you directly through your consciousness of divine abundance and supply.
Nothing and no one can exhaust this goodness. God’s supply is instant, complete, and sustained. You must know this beyond knowing—you must feel these things with every iota of your being. You are a center of God’s activity, as are all embodied souls whom God uses as channels for His influence in the world. Don’t expect others to meet your needs. Exercise the divine active faith that knows that God will supply your needs according to His riches in glory. The virtue of a channel is that it must be open at both ends. All Creation operates under the law of the direct circulation of God’s good.
Give! and while you also maintain your consciousness of receiving, the free-flowing abundance comes pouring in. Do this consciously and be aware of what you are doing, the way you know the difference between a nickel and a $5 gold piece. Declare, “My own is coming to me in wealth, plenty and riches.” Mind is the interpretive medium between the life of God and its manifestation. No matter how lofty the ideal, you must have a method to attain it!
.
Edna Miriam Lister
1884–1971
The original Pioneering Mystic,
Christian Platonist philosopher, American Idealist, Founder, Society of the Universal Living Christ, minister, teacher, author, wife, and mother.
Edna Lister became the fulltime Minister of the Buffalo Unity Center December 2, 1933.
We owe a debt of gratitude to the enthusiastic, determined efforts of Clarissa A. Watkins, who rendered her shorthand notes into a lengthy dated manuscript found among Edna Lister’s personal papers. In a typed message she wrote, “To our Most Glorious Leader, Edna Lister: Here are my typed up notes, and please do forgive the delay. We all believe that we should publish as many of your lectures as you will permit. No one has ever brought such a message to earth! Please accept this humble offering of service, C.A.W.”
The Christian Platonist’s Good
The greatest proclamation you can speak is This is good! Let there be Light!
God The One is the Good, which is Truth and Beauty. Your covenant with God is written in your soul:
This shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts.
–Jeremiah 31:33
This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them.
–Hebrews 10:16
God as Consciousness Appears as Form is the first transcript of an Edna Lister lecture or sermon in our archive of her work. Its Platonic explanation of GOD AS ALL is astonishingly clear and concise. This is where she started. We know that the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us,
but was Jesus of Nazareth, who became the Christ, the first visitation of the Word? No, but he is the greatest, and he will return as will his harbingers. By their works and their words, you shall know them.–Linda Mihalic
References
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia. New York: The Century Co., 1896.
GIS Geography. Magnetic North vs Geographic (True) North Pole.
Geographic Information Systems (GIS), May 27, 2022.
The Holy Bible. King James Version (KJV).
Plato, Timaeus, 41a-43b.
Sechenov, Ivan. Reflexes of the Brain. Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1963.